1210 
.B4 



I 



LECTURES 



ON 



SCEPTICISM, 



DELIVERED IN 



PARK STREET CHURCH, BOSTON, AND IN TBI 
SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
CINCINNATI. 



V 

BY LYMAN BEECHER, D. D. 

PRESIDENT OF LANE SEMINARY. 



THIRD EDITIOJT, 



CINCINNATI: 
PUBLISHED BY COREY AND WEBSTER. 
1835. 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1834, 
BY COREY AND FAIRBA]>fK, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Ohio. 



Stereotyped by J. A. James. 



Cincinnati : 
Printed by F. S. Benton, 
E. Corner Main and Fifth Streets. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The following lectures, delivered in Bos- 
ton, in the year 1831, and in Cincinnati, in 
the year 1833, are now presented for the 
patronage of the christian public. They have 
been withheld for some time, as it was the 
original intention of the Author, to have ad- 
ded a few lectures in the same volume, on 
the Republican Tendencies of the Bible, and 
on several doctrinal subjects, as intimately 
connected with Scepticism. His numerous 
engagements having prevented him from 
completing his design, it has been thought 
best to place before the public those which 
have been delivered. 

THE PUBLISHERS. 

Cincinnati, December, 1835. 



a2 



I 

iji 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

Causes of scepticism. Ever learning, and never able to come to the 
knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy^ iii. 7. page 9 

LECTURE IL 

The causes and remedy of scepticism. Beware lest any man 
spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition 
of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 
Cohsdans^ ii. 8. •••v • • 23 

LECTURE in. 

Political atheism. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no 
God. Psalm, xiv. 1, • 57 

LECTURE IV. 

The perils of atheism to the nation. This know also, that in 
the last days perilous times shall come; for men shall be lovers 
of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, diso- 
bedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, 
truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those 
that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures 
more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but deny- 
ing the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort 
are they who creep into houses, and lead captive silly women 

vii 



viii 



CONTENTS. 



laden with sins, led away with divers lusts; ever learning, and 
never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 2 Timothy^ 
iii. 1—7. 73 



LECTURE V. 

The perils of atheism to the nation. Knowing this first, that 
there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own 
lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since 
the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the 
beginning of the creation. 2 Peter^ iii. 3, 4. • 97 

LECTURE VI. 

The attributes and character of god. And the Lord passed 
by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merci- 

• ful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and 
truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and trans- 
gression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; 
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon 
the childrens' children, unto the third and to the fourth genera- 
tion. Exodus^ xxxiv. 6, 7. • 135 



LECTURE I. 
CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



1 TIMOTHY, III. 7. 

EVER LEARNING, AND NEVER ABLE TO COME TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF 
THE TRUTH. 

Truth is the reality of things — It is natural as it 
respects the material world, and moral as it respects 
mind, accountability, and moral government. Our 
knowledge of truth is by consciousness, intuition, 
the senses, and evidence. Consciousness is the 
mind's recognition of its own being, powers, and 
actions. Intuition is the mind's perception of obvi- 
ous, primary truths, which are the elements of de- 
monstration — such as, that every eflfect must have 
a cause; and that the parts are equal to the whole. 
It is intuition which constitutes the premises of de- 
monstration, the primary truths being seen by the 
mind, and each step in the process, also, being a 
matter of intuition, or of mental perception. The 
reports of the senses are called knowledge, because 
they so uniformly correspond with the reality of 



10 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



things, that occasional aberration occasions no dis- 
trust, but rather confirms the general rule. There is 
a yet wider field of knowledge which lies without the 
sphere of consciousness, and beyond the range of 
intuition, and the cognizance of the senses, the re- 
alities of which are certified to us by evidence; and 
the confidence produced is called belief. The evi- 
dence which sustains belief, is either the evidence 
of human testimony, or the accumulation of proba- 
biUties from the uniform operation of the laws of 
nature. This last evidence rests on the self-evident 
proposition, that no effect can exist without a cause — 
that what has been and is, will continue to be, where 
there is no perceived cause of change, derived from 
a supposition of a stated order of cause and effect; 
and rises from faint probabihty to moral certainty, 
according to the frequency and uniformity of the 
effects produced. Had the sun never risen before 
to-day, the evidence of its rising to-morrow, would 
be no greater than the appearance of a meteor in 
the sky would be of its return. But had the meteor 
appeared as uniformly as the sun has appeared, the 
evidence in both cases would be equal, of a stated 
order of cause and effect. 

The difference between demonstration and moral 
certainty^ is, that in one case the mind sees the 
object of comparison, and sees the result, which, 
of course, is knowledge; but in the other, derives 
i ts confidence from the perception of probabilities 
multipUed till they produce confidence, or moral 
certainty. On the whole, consciousness, intuition, 
the senses, the evidence of testimony, and analogy, 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



11 



all rest on the supposition, that things are as they 
seem to be, and will continue to manifest the same 
attributes and results. 

Scepticism is a state of mind in which these con- 
stitutional grounds of certainty fail to produce con- 
fidence. Sometimes the evidence does not satisfy 
the mind, in respect to its sufficiency; and in other 
cases, where the argument seems to be intellectu- 
ally conclusive, it fails to produce any correspond- 
ing sense of the reahty and certainty of the things 
proved. Sometimes, in cases of mental alienation, 
confidence is suspended, and men doubt their own 
being, or personal identity. When it respects in- 
tuition, demonstration loses its power. When the 
senses are distrusted, experimental knowledge fails. 
Instances are not uncommon, in which persons 
have supposed themselves, or their friends, to have 
become some other person; and I have just read 
of a gentleman who, for two years past, has refused 
to leave his dwelling, from the full persuasion that 
he is a tea-pot, and should endanger his earthen 
vessel by an unrestrained intercourse with external 
objects. 

It is the field of moral government, however, 
and accountability, over which the mist of darkness 
is apt especially to gather, and doubts to settle 
down. For here the temptation to doubt, is greatly 
enhanced by sinful character and its liabilities; 
and the facilities of perversion and distrust, from 
the nature of the evidence, are proportionably 
multipHed. 

It is scepticism in relation to the being and gov- 



12 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM* 



ernment of God, and our relations to it as account- 
able subjects, as disclosed in the Bible, which will 
constitute the subject of this lecture. 

I employ the term Scepticism in preference to 
the terms Atheism, Infidelity, and Heresy, because 
these are more invidious, and because scepticism 
marks more accurately the state of this entire class 
of minds. In fact, there are few who positively 
disbelieve the being of God, or the inspiration of 
the Bible. To doubt, is commonly the extent of 
human attainment, in throwing off reluctant respon- 
sibihty to the government of God. The Atheist 
does not know that there is no God. He merely 
does not believe it, and doubts. The Deist does 
not disbelieve the inspiration of the Bible. He is 
merely not convinced that it is true, and doubts. 
Those who reject the received doctrines of the 
Bible, do not fully disbelieve them. They fear, of- 
ten, that they are true, — hope earnestly that they 
are not, and doubt. 

The present is eminently an age of scepticism 
throughout the world. Pagans are becoming scep- 
tical in respect to their ancient systems, — Maho- 
metans are beginning to distrust their ancient Pro- 
phet, — and Papists to distrust the infallibility of His 
HoKness, and the Church. And Protestants, in- 
stead of taking things upon trust, are with increased 
determination, appealing from the decisions of men; 
and even sceptics themselves, are beginning to 
doubt, whether in their sceptical wanderings, they 
have not got out of the w y and may not be in 
danger of being lost. 



CAUSES OP SCEPTICISM. 



13 



Whenever an epidemic sweeps over the world, 
we take it for granted that there is some universal 
cause ; and on the same principles, when we witness 
the wide-spread aberration of mind, on the subject 
of evidence, we conclude that there are some cau- 
ses of corresponding extent and power, which pro- 
duce the result. 

It will be the object of this lecture to develope 
some of the causes of this mental phenomenouj as 
respects the being of God, the inspiration of the 
Bible, and the exposition of some of its doctrines. 

Undoubtedly, the generic cause without which 
all others would be powerless, is to be sought in 
the alienation of man from God, and his deep aver- 
sion to the responsibilities of his perfect and eter- 
nal government. It might not at first be supposed, 
that a perfect government, consulting wisely and 
benevolently, the highest good of every subject, 
could be the subject of aversion; and to loyal minds, 
it would not be; but to the disloyal, its very per- 
fection and stability are its terrific attributes. An 
attempt to execute strictly the laws of the land, on 
all points, would create a revolution — not because 
the laws are not good, but because men are evil. 
And it is because God is good, and men are evil, 
that they are averse to responsibility, and seek to al- 
leviate their fears by the interposition of uncertainty 
and doubt. They are willingly negligent of the 
acquisition of evidence, and slow of heart to believe 
what is proved, and dexterous, by inattention, to 
throw the testimony into a quick oblivion, and per- 
B 



14 



CAUSES OP SCEPTICISM. 



petuate around them a sceptical and unrealizing 
state of mind. 

The great perversion of Christianity during the 
dark ages, hy the downfall of the Roman empire, 
the incursion of the northern barbarians', and the 
extinction of civil and religious liberty, has been, 
from age to age, a source of prejudice against Chris- 
tianity, and a fruitful cause of declamation and 
scepticism. 

During the midnight which settled down upon 
the world, by the extinction of science and religion, 
the feudal system arose, which lies at the founda- 
tion of that inequaHty of rank and property which 
characterizes and curses modern Europe. To per- 
petuate this unjust monopoly, the state gave its pro- 
tection to the church, and the church gave its ter- 
rific power to the state, until at length the latter 
became the ascendant, and ruled the world with a 
rod of iron. Under this ecclesiastical despotism, 
the nations of the civilized world groaned, travailed 
in pain a thousand years. During this long night, 
liberty, and virtue, and vigorous enterprise slept in 
chains, and were punished as felons, while no de- 
basement, or impurity, or fraud, or cruelty, which 
human ingenuity could invent, or human power 
execute, was unpractised. These abominations of 
ecclesiastical despotism, have brought upon Christi- 
anity an odium, and surrounded the system with a 
jealousy, which the Protestant Reformation, and 
the restoration of civil and religious liberty, have 
not been able to wipe away. And to this day, the 
disciples of those who achieved this illustrious eman- 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



15 



cipation, are involved in the odium against Chris- 
tianity, created hy the priesthood, whose horrid 
despotism their great predecessors were employed to 
overthrow. 

The anti-christian conspiracy, the long-delayed 
but terrific result of perverted Christianity, has given 
a new impulse to the cause of scepticism. 

The revival of letters at the reformation, which 
emancipated half Europe, produced so much light 
in countries where ecclesiastical dominion still main- 
tained its empire, as rendered the darkness visible 
and intolerable, and produced, first. Deism, and at 
length Atheism, and the French Revolution. For 
more than half a century, the conspirators at- 
tempted, by argument and ridicule, to emancipate 
the people from the power of superstition and the 
priesthood, and the prostituted energies of civil gov- 
ernment, until they came to the conclusion, that 
while irresponsible men were permitted to wield 
the sanctions of Christianity, there could be no 
liberty; and that there was no way to emancipate 
the nation, but to obliterate all belief in the being 
of God and the Bible, and to sweep away every 
vestige of Christianity. And this they systematic- 
ally attempted, and most thoroughly accomplished, 
by falsehood, by ridicule, and by argument, until 
aided by the corruptions of the reigning system, 
they succeeded in obliterating from the mind of a 
nation, all traces of belief in the being of God, 
and a future state. The explosion was terrific. It 
did, indeed, for a time, suspend the entire action of 
the divine government, and overturned thrones and 



16 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM* 



altars: but it blew to atoms, also, the conspirators, 
and all their chimerical hopes. It was like the 
uncapping of a volcano, whose fires rolled one con- 
tinuous sheet of desolation over all. It was amid 
voices, and thunderings, and a mighty earthquake, 
that the tremendous system fell. But though the 
effort failed to overthrow the government of God, 
and the world has been warned of the terrors which 
await an Atheistical political Millennium, their 
specious writings still remain to pervert those who 
have forgotten their results. There is in them no 
great profundity of talent, or ground of confidence; 
but there is in them the best possible adaptation to 
unhinge and unsettle mind; and whoever reads them 
with implicit confidence will be subverted. Charged 
with ridicule, like the poisoned arrow, they inflict a 
double death — by the stroke they destroy; and to 
make assurance doubly sure, by the venom which 
they throw into their system, they destroy. 

The attempt to repress scepticism by authority, 
and the odium of hard names, has served rather to 
augment than to stay the malady. 

It is not the plan of heaven, that truths which lie 
within the sphere of evidence, should be obtained 
without mental effort. Acquisition by investigation, 
and delight in action, is a part of the mind's ever- 
lasting employment and blessedness. Men ought to 
think for themselves, as really as they ought to eat 
for themselves; and if to prevent infidelity, you 
repress investigation, you may have uniformity, 
indeed, but it will be that of vacant minds. You 
may avert storms, but it will be to secure stagna- 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



17 



tion and putrefaction. It is not true, however, that 
free and independent thought tends to infidehty. 
There always have been minds, and there always 
will be, who will not submit to dictation, or tamely 
commit to memory other men's opinions; and it is 
to such men that the reformation owed its birth, and 
from whom the Bible has received its most able 
defence. And if, as incident to such high action, 
there should be some who sometimes miss the mark, 
they are not to be treated as outlaws. You may 
intimidate the abject in this manner, but assuredly 
you will raise up around the church an army of 
powerful, embittered assailants, to make reprisals, by 
the subversion of her sons. No doubt men are 
accountable to God for their dangerous errors, and 
their mischievous tendency may properly be exposed; 
but it should be done in the language of compassion, 
towards them that are out of the way, and not in 
the language of contempt and vituperation. 

It is not uncommon for men to mistake their 
feelings of unreconciled aversion to truth, for lack 
of evidence. 

We are not satisfied, they say. We are not con- 
vinced. We are ready to believe when the evidence 
is sufficient. When the whole secret is, that they 
are not pleased. To the disobedient, law always 
appears unreasonable. The entire anti-social con- 
spiracy of thieves, robbers, burglars, pickpockets, 
and swindlers, look upon our laws and institutions 
with aversion, and are deeply prejudiced, and viru- 
lent in their opposition. They regard separate 
property, and government, as a usurpation, and 
b2 



18 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



their own disgrace and exile as an unreasonable perse- 
cution* And thus, and for the same reasons, do 
sinful men feel towards the government of God, 
and they call that insuflGLcient evidence which fails 
to remove the discontented feeling. 

Another fruitful cause of scepticism is found in 
the supposed irresponsibility of man for his opin- 
ions. 

For that which is constitutional, instinctive, and 
unmodified by volition, doubtless we are not accoun- 
table. And if opinion were formed without the 
modifying influence of the heart, the maxim might 
be just. But it is not so. There is no place 
where passion, prejudice, interest, and aversion, 
have more power. It is the will which sends out 
to summon the witnesses, on one side only, or on 
both, as it shall decide — which shuts the eye, and 
stops the ear, and suspends the recording pen, 
and is all awake, currente calamoj when the side 
testifies which favors inclination. It is the will 
which writes the testimony upon sand, or upon 
brass, as it favors or offends. It is the will — the 
busy dexterity of an evil heart, — ^which gathers up 
and piles into the scales, all the specious argu- 
ments which favor inclination, and keeps out the 
arguments which would turn them against pre- 
dominant desire — and when the light is too over- 
powering, to render an erroneous verdict possible, 
men see^ as in a glass, the truth, and straightway, 
from inattention, wiUingly forget its image and 
superscnplion; and even where conviction main- 
tains its empire, move the tongue in opposition 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



19 



to the better judgment. Such being the meddling 
and powerful dexterity of the heart, it needs 
powerful responsibility to bind it to good behavior. 
Among holy beings, responsibility is the guardian 
of virtuous action. Nothing in Heaven thrives 
without it; and on earth, among alienated sub- 
jects, its cessation is desperate licentiousness. 
How can it be expected that men will toil through 
extended investigations, and hold the balance 
even against fear and diversions of interest or 
passion, without motive? As well might morality 
be reconciled with total irresponsibility of action, 
as an enlightened and correct belief. 

The demand of evidence on moral subjects, 
which the nature of mind renders impossible, is 
another cause of scepticism. 

Why, it is said, could not God make unbeHei 
impossible, as in consciousness and demonstration? 
Because the truths to be proved lie beyond the 
limits of consciousness, or the scope of the mind's 
intuition, or the cognizance of the senses. Who 
can demonstrate the history of the American revo- 
lution, the adoption of the constitution, or its cor- 
rect exposition? The great business of life is guided 
by experiment, analogy, and testimony; and though 
it admits of moral certainty, it admits of prejudice, 
and folly, and wilful evasion. Let one of these 
philosophers put in practice his own maxim, and we 
shall perceive his folly. He sends for his physician — 
Sir, can you demonstrate that I am sick, and wha^ 
ails me, and what will cure me ? Not exactly,-* 
but I perceive symptoms of indisposition upon you* 



20 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICIS3I. 



I know by observation what disease they indicate; 
and by experience, I have ascertained the remedy. 
None of your quackery — I am not a man to be im 
posed upon. Demonstrate to me that I am sick^ 
and what ails me, and what will cure me, or I have 
no further occasion for your services. He sends for 
his merchant. But first I wish to be certified of the 
correctness of your charges. Can you demonstrate 
that these articles were taken? lean prove it by 
satisfactory evidence. I shall not be satisfied by 
any evidence but demonstration. He sends for his 
attorney. I think it probable that I may soon leave 
this loose-jointed world. Can you inform me how I 
can demonstrate my last will and testament, in favor 
of my beloved wife and children? Indeed, sir, I 
cannot. Then pettifogger, leave me, as I hope soon 
to leave this world of visions and of doubts. 

The pushing of investigation without first princi- 
ples, competent instruction, and study, is a fruitful 
cause of scepticism. The dependence of high and 
sublime truths on those which are obvious, is such, 
that no man who neglects the elements of knowledge 
can possibly unlock and enter her secret chambers. 
What mind can reach the depths of the mathematics, 
the heights of astronomy, or the secrets of chemistry, 
without attending to the alphabet of these sciences? 
What progress has ever been made by man in 
knowledge, but as theories have been abandoned, 
and intuition, and experience, and evidence, made 
the basis of knowledge; and yet, without lamp, 
compass, or chart, or study, men plunge into the 
profound of theology^ and grope, and rend, and 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



3i 



involve the subject, until desperation or despondency 
puts an end to their fruitless labor, in a state of 
scepticism. It is a law of heaven, that men shall 
acquire knowledge on all subjects, in the first in- 
stance, by instruction, and careful, persevering 
mental application. But sceptical men insist on 
being self-taught, and that, also, without the tax of 
patient mental application. 

The pushing of investigation beyond the bounda- 
ries of knowledge, is a frequent cause of discour- 
agement and scepticism — going beyond the sphere 
of consciousness, or of intuition, or of the senses, 
into the territories of theory, and twilight, and con- 
jecture. These, often, are men of vigorous minds 
and impatient desire ; and comet-like, launch forth 
in their fiery career: but having gone beyond the 
centripetal attractions^ of the moral universe, they 
fall by their own density, and flounder amid the 
bogs and quagmires of chaos and old night, or like 
the adventurous navigator, they launch out on an 
unknown sea, tempest-tossed and not comforted; 
ever dreaming that some land is near, and straining 
their sightless eyeballs upon darkness, in the con- 
stant expectation of the bursting out of some great 
light, to whom is still reserved the blackness of 
darkness. For though their strength were equal to 
that of Polyphemus, it is exerted without vision in 
smiting upon the waters, to raise a mist about their 
own heads. 

The society of sceptical men, who are scofiers and 
partizans in the warfare against Christianity is a 
powerful cause of scepticism. 



22 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



All whose confidence in the Bible falters, are not 
scoffers. Many venerate Christianity and would by 
no means impair its influence on other minds, who 
feel, and sometimes lament the unsettled cojidition 
of their own. But there are men who are inflamed 
with the madness of unbelief, and who associate and 
systematize their efforts, to undermine the confi- 
dence of the community in Christianity, and to the 
young who fall under their influence their words of 
scorn are terrific as batteries, contagious as the 
plague, corrosive as canker and deadly as poison. 
In their associations they assail the inexperienced 
with false statements which they are not able to 
contradict, with sophistry which they cannot detect, 
and with objections which they cannot answer, and 
with blasphemies made eloquent by the inspiration 
of the bowl, which amaze and confound them. The 
den of lions and the retreat of adders and vipers, 
are not more perilous to life than these evil commu- 
nications are to a sound mind and confidence in 
evidence. 



LECTURE II. 

THE 

CAUSES AND REMEDY 

OP 

SCEPTICISM. 



COLOSSIANS, II. 8. 

BEWARE LEST ANY MAN SPOIL YOU THROUGH PHILOSOPHY AND VAIN 
DECEIT, AFTER THE TRADITION OF MEN, AFTER THE RUDIMENTS 
OF THE WORLD, AND NOT AFTER CHRIST. 

Philosophy is the nature which God has given 
to things, as perceived by the human mind — to 
matter and to mind, in the endless relations of 
cause and effect, motive and choice ; and so far as 
the properties and laws of created things He within 
the cognizance of our faculties, they constitute the 
material of all knowledge and of all experience. 

The bible itself, while it never professedly teach- 
es, always assumes and never contradicts the true 
philosophy of things. When it describes things 
as they appear to the eye, the appearance cor- 
responds with the description; when they assume 
the nature, or attributes, or relations and conse- 
quences of things, observation verifies always the 

23 



24 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



accuracy of the assumption. It cannot be inter- 
preted without it, and cannot be explained in 
opposition to it. Indeed the interpretation of 
language, as figurative or literal, turns on the 
known properties of the subjects spoken of; and 
of several meanings possible, the nature of the 
subject decides the selection. 

The difficulty in the primitive age was, and ever 
has been, that false philosophy has been interpo- 
lated in nature's book, and the attempt pertina- 
ciously made to accommodate the bible to those 
facts which never happened; and to make those 
theoretical apparitions the expositions of truth; — 
a process which has kept torture upon holy writ, 
and an earthquake in the church to this day; 
and never will the river of the water of life run 
pure and copious, and irresistible, extending uni- 
versal life in its course, till all the interpolations 
of a false philosophy are blotted out from na- 
ture's page, and rent from the system of inter- 
pretation, and thrown away. 

With these remarks in view, I proceed to observe, 
that the creeds of the reformation are also made 
often the occasion of perplexity and doubt, to 
inexperienced minds. 

They contain unquestionably the system of doc- 
trine taught in the Holy Scriptures, and they have 
stood through ages against the encroachments of 
error — as the iron bound shores to the ocean. But 
they were constructed amidst the most arduous 
controversy that ever taxed the energies of man| 
and with the eye fixed upon the errors of the day 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



25 



and on the points around which the battle chiefly 
raged; on some topics they are more full than 
the proportion of the faith now demands; some 
of their phraseology also once familiar, would now 
without explanation inculcate sentiments which are 
not scriptural, which the framers did not believe 
and the creeds were never intended to teach. 

They present also the results of investigations 
without giving to the reader the intervening steps, 
without which minds not favored with leisure and dis- 
ciplined by study, could not easily arrive at the 
conclusions. 

Of course they appear rather as insulated, in- 
dependent, abstract propositions, than as the sym- 
metrical parts and proportions of a beautiful and 
glorious system of divine legislation, for maintaining 
the laws and protecting the rights of the universe, 
while the alienated are reconciled and the guilty 
are pardoned — and though as abstract truths cor- 
rectly expounded, according to the intention of the 
framers, they unquestionably inculcate the system 
of doctrines contained in the Holy Scriptures — 
and though, as land-marks and boundaries between 
truth and error they are truly important; yet, as 
the means for the popular exposition and the sa- 
ving application of truth, they are far short of the 
exigencies of the day in which we Uve — mere 
skeletons of truth compared with the system clothed 
and beautified, and inspired with life, as it ex- 
ists and operates in the word of God. Unhappily 
also — some of the most important truths they in- 
culcate are in their exposition so twisted in with 

C 



36 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



the reigning philosophy of the day, as to be in 
the popular apprehension identified with it and 
are made odious and repellant by its errors, as if 
these philosophical theories were the fundamental 
doctrines of the bible. There is no end to the 
mischief which false philosophy, employed in the 
exposition and defence of the doctrines of the 
reformation, has in this manner accomplished. 
Good men have contended for theories, as if they 
were vital to the system, and regarded as heretical 
those who received the doctrine of the bible and 
only rejected their philosophy. They have cried 
out against and renounced philosophizing, when 
it was their own philosophizing which divided 
and agitated the church. In this manner the 
church has been filled with controversies, and 
feuds, and jealousies — and intelligent men oflTended 
alike by absurd philosophy and unchristian con- 
troversies about it, have in the conflict of opin- 
ion become discouraged and disgusted — and have 
either adopted heretical opinions or become scep- 
tical. It is my deliberate opinion that the false 
philosophy which has been employed for the ex- 
position of the Calvinistic system, has done more 
to obstruct the march of Christianity, and to 
paralyze the saving power of the gospel, and to 
raise up and organize around the church, the 
unnumbered multitude to behold, and wonder, and 
despise, and perish, than all other causes beside. 
There is no subject which so moves my com- 
passion or fills my soul with regret, or my heart 
with the feeling, "Oh that my head were waters. 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



27 



and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might 
weep day and night for the slain of the daughter 
of my people." 

Nor is it to be expected that the gospel will 
ever be attended with its primitive power in sud- 
den and numberless conversions — till it is again, 
as it then was, preached in demonstration of the 
spirit, and of power unobstructed by the clouds 
and darkness of a false philosophy. The points 
especially affected by this philosophy are vital to 
the principles of moral government, and adverse 
to the constitutional perceptions of truth, the uni- 
versal dictate of common sense, and the unequiv- 
ocal elements of accountability as recognized in 
human government, and recognized and sanctioned 
in the bible, and as employed by the holy spirit 
in convincing men of sin, and of God's justice 
in their condemnation. If they are not absurd, 
nothing is absurd, and if they are not false, nothing 
is false, and if according to them the conduct 
of God is not indefensible and unjust, it is only 
because what God does is right, simply and only 
because he does it, and that nothing which he 
does can be unjust. 

The points to which I allude as violated by 
a false philosophy, are the principles of personal 
identity, by which the posterity of Adam are dis- 
tinct from or confounded with their ancestor, and 
the principles of personal accountability and de- 
sert of punishment, as men are made accounta- 
ble and punishable for his conduct, or become 
liable to sin and misery, as a universal conse- 



28 



CAUSES OP SCEPTICISM. 



quence. The nature of sin and of holiness con- 
sidered as material qualities or the substance of 
the soul, or as instincts, or as the spontaneous 
action of mind under moral government, in the 
full possession of all the elements of accountability. 
And above all, the doctrine of the decrees of 
God— and the universal certainty of all events to 
his fore-knowledge — as they are either unex- 
plained or explained by a false philosophy. 

To which may be added the nature of the 
atonement and its extent, and the doctrines of 
election and reprobation as they shine in the 
bible or through the medium of a perverting phi- 
losophy. Whatever of these philosophical theories 
appertained to the system during the arduous con- 
flict for civil and religious liberty against the 
Papal despotism of modern Europe, men endured, 
even swallowed them unhesitatingly, almost unthink- 
ingly, in the presence of a greater evil; but 
since the conflict has passed away, and the nature 
of mind and moral government is better under- 
stood, and the numbers who think and will 
think for themselves multiply, these repellencies 
of false philosophy have steadily increased, and 
will increase, till that which is adventitious and 
false is relinquished — and the truth is preached 
in its purity and unbroken power. 

These evils of philosophy have however been 
greatly aggravated by the caricatures of Calvi- 
nism, which on all sides have been multiplied. 

I have never seen or heard a correct state- 
ment of the Calvinistic system from an oppo« 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



29 



nent. Consult almost any oracle of opposition as 
to what is Calvinism, and the response will be, 
Calvinism is that horrible system which teaches 
that God has foreordained and fixed, by irresis- 
tible omnipotence, whatsoever comes to pass; 
that he has made a very small number of man- 
kind on purpose to be saved and all the rest 
on purpose to damn them; that an atonment by 
weight and measure has been made for the 
elect only, but which is offered to the non-elect 
on conditions impossible to be compHed with, 
and they are damned for not accepting what did 
not belong to them and could not have saved 
them if they had received it, and that infants 
as well as adults are included in the decree of 
reprobation, and that hell no doubt is paved 
with their bones. 

It is needless to say that falsehoods more ab- 
solute and intire were never stereotyped in the 
foundery of the father of lies, or with greater 
industry worked off for gratuitous distribution 
from age to age. 

False conceptions of the nature and prerogatives 
of reason have been another abundant cause of 
confusion and scepticism. 

Reason considered as a faculty is the mind 
itself acting upon evidence and moral fitness, 
and reasonable is whatever the mind perceives 
to be conformed to some acknowledged standard 
of truth or rectitude. 

In the presence of competent testimony be- 
lief is reasonable. In natural philosophy whaf- 

c3 



30 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



ever accords with the laws of matter is reason- 
able, and in moral government and theology 
whatever accords with the nature of mind and 
free agency and the principles of law and moral 
government is reasonable, and in relation to the 
comprehensive purposes of God that plan is rea- 
sonable which will best develope his power and 
wisdom and goodness in the creation and gov- 
ernment of the intelligent universe. 

While correct conceptions of reason as a fac- 
ulty prevail and a correct standard of what is 
reasonable is maintained, the decisions of the 
mind within the sphere of its competency may 
be relied on, and the maxim that nothing is to 
be believed which is contrary to reason is true, 
meaning only that nothing is to be believed, 
which contradicts our consciousness or our intu- 
ition or our senses or without evidence, or which 
is contrary to the known laws of the natural 
or moral world, or to those principles of order 
which God himself has rendered too obvious to 
be mistaken or controverted. 

But the fact is that loose and incorrect con- 
ceptions of reason, as a faculty of mind, pre- 
vail — and also concerning what is the external 
standard of what is reasonable and unreasonable. 

By some, reason is deified and clothed with a 
sort of unerring omniscient intuition, in respect to 
all sorts of matters and things. So that one of 
these sagacious philosophers has only to turn his 
sapient eye on any subject whatever, and howeve 
recondite and profound, he sees with the slightest 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



31 



glance what is reasonable about it, and what is 
absurd — and can settle it instantly with oracular 
certainty. 

Others regard reason as a sort of moral in- 
stinct, v/hich decides by feeling instead of eye- 
sight, and exercises on all points an unerring 
discrimination. 

And as to the import of the term reasonable, 
that is sometimes what accords with the pre- 
conceived opinions of men, with what it seems 
to them most suitable and proper that God should 
do — and sometimes it is that which corresponds 
with their wishes, and sits pleasantly on their 
feelings. Now when such vague and false con- 
ceptions are formed of the attributes and capa- 
cities of reason, in the utter absence of all 
correct and definite standards of comparison, 
and that outer darkness to which presumptuous 
men push their speculations where God reigns 
alone and asks no counsel, and gives no account 
of his matters, is it wonderful that men become 
bewildered, confounded, wearied, discouraged, and 
at length sceptical from the supposed impossi- 
bility of knowing any thing? When they ex- 
plore the bible and analyze the conduct of God 
with such false conceptions, it is not wonderful 
that what they meet with does not correspond 
with their preconceived opinions, or with their 
wishes, or with their feelings, and that they 
should be offended, and perplexed, and in des- 
pondency and vexation give up the knowledge 



32 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM* 



of the truth, as something which cannot be ob- 
tained. 

The liberty which some nominal christians 
have taken with the inspiration and exposition 
of the bible, has tended powerfully to under- 
mine their own and the public confidence in 
the book. 

Having decided by reason what the bible 
ought to mean, they have attempted to make its 
stubborn dialect conform, and to stop its mouth 
where it would speak amiss, or by the rack to 
compel it to prophesy deceits. And where all 
this will not avail, to lop off with the knife 
the incorrigible passages. 

But by the time this torturing, pruning pro- 
cess is ended, there is little left which the ex- 
perimenter himself believes; and but little con- 
fidence in that which he affects to believe. 
When it has been once discovered that the Old 
Testament is obsolete, and filled with unworthy 
conceptions of God and dangerous errors; that 
certain portions of the New Testament are spu- 
rious, and others mistranslated; that many of 
the epistles are of doubtful authority, and none 
of them so guarded by inspiration as to exclude 
false reasoning, allegorizings, and mysticism, and 
accommodations to the errors and prejudices of 
the age; that even the Gospels are not a reve- 
lation, but merely a history of one, which unin- 
spired men wrote down as well as they could 
remember, but with less ability than Cicero or So- 
crates would have done it^ they are prepared for the 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



33 



conclusion, that there is no revelation, and that 
reason is man's only guide; that there is some 
truth in the bible which was once revealed, which 
lies somewhere amid the rubbish of ages, and 
the confusion of mistake; but what it is, and 
where it is, reason must decide, taking up the 
particles of truth by its own attraction, as the 
magnet extracts iron from the sand. No other book 
could sustain its character for truth under such 
treatment — no other book ever written by men 
of common sense, was ever regarded as being 
thus incapable of definite exposition. Such un- 
certainty thrown upon human legislation, would 
destroy utterly the power of civil governments. 
Were it announced from the bar and the bench, 
that the obvious import of the statute book is 
not the true import, that more than half of it is 
obsolete and filled with false principles of law, 
that in the best parts, some enactments are in- 
terpolations and others borrowed from dead lan- 
guages mistranslated; that none of them are the 
laws of the state, but the mere history of laws, 
passed ages ago, which the bystanders heard en- 
acted, and wrote down for our use according to 
the best of their .recollection; with fewer means 
for accuracy than the reporters of parliamentary 
or congressional debates; that they have sent 
down to us many wise and some foolish laws, 
which need to be modified in accommodation to 
the altered state of society; and that in discrimi- 
nating between what is obsolete, and interpolated, 
and misremembered and mistranslated, and what is 



34 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



genuine and obligatory, the bench, and the jury^ 
and the people must judge for themselves — fol- 
lowing the dictates of their own reason, — could 
the statute book, with no more definiteness and 
authority defend us against the innovations of 
the anti-social system? And can the bible, as 
Heaven's law book, be treated thus and continue 
to be " the law of the Lord, converting the 
soul; the testimony of the Lord, which is sure, 
making wise the simple," ^ the power of 
God and the wisdom of God unto salvation?" 
Can such loose and low opinions of the bible, 
be thrown out upon the community, and not 
subtract from the reverence and the confidence, 
which is indispensable, to render it the efiicient 
legislation of Heaven? The results of this prac- 
tice have corresponded with its tendencies. In 
Germany, it has brought commentator and 
reader, to the frank unqualified denial of the in- 
spiration of the bible; and in this country, the 
same treatment of the bible has already pro- 
duced, and is producing the same results. 

Another occasion of scepticism, is the con- 
founding of the physical and moral power of 
God. 

Physical omnipotence is the capacity of God 
to do whatever is, in the nature of things, possi- 
ble to be done by direct power. 

Moral omnipotence is the capacity of God to 
do by laws and moral influence, whatever is con- 
sistent with the nature of mind, of free agency, 
accountability, and moral government. 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



35 



He did not so make the Solar System, as that 
its government, hy the ten commandments, should 
be a possible thing, or so constitute the mind as 
that choice and accountability should by any 
possibility be the result of a direct irresistible om- 
nipotence. But multitudes confound this distinc- 
tion, and apply the attributes of physical omnipo- 
tence to the government of mind, and thus 
drawing inferences against the bible, attempt to 
explain away its unbending orthodoxy. Why, they 
say, if faith is necessary, does not God make men 
believe? Is he not Omnipotent? What need was 
there for an atonement? Could not God have 
held the heart of the universe steady even 
though he had sanctified and pardoned the guilty? 
Is he not Almighty? Does he not desire the 
salvation of all, and work all things after the 
counsel of his own will? Why then will not all 
men be saved? Who can believe that he will 
punish when his power enables him just as con- 
sistently to save? They overlook the fact, that 
simple power, such as can wield the material 
universe, must act in the government of mind 
by laws, and motives, and moral influence, with 
reference to the formation and continuance of 
character, and free agency, and accountability; 
and that to assert that God can govern mind 
directly, as he governs matter, is to beg the ques- 
tion, and deny the distinction between material 
and moral government, and contradict the bible, 
which declares that God, by the law could not, 



36 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



and only through the atonement could be just 
and the justifier of him that beheveth. 

Another cause of scepticism is found in mental 
dissipation. 

There are multitudes who think incessantly, 
but never make the effort to methodize and 
digest their thoughts. They read .all sorts of 
books, engage in all sorts of discussions, hear 
all sorts of preachers, vainly hoping that in 
some favored moment, truth personified will stand 
before them. But as she does not appear, they 
let the heterogeneous mass float in upon and op- 
press the mind, as undigested aliment does the 
stomach — till fumes and debility ensue. No 
wonder they cannot beheve any thing. The an- 
imal who could not eat between two equal attrac- 
tions of appetite, and at length gorged himself 
by eating every thing within his reach, would 
not be in a more pitiable condition. 

The union of church and state in Protestant 
nations has been a fruitful cause of scepticism. 

It was the result of an order of things which 
the reformers could not change; which, though 
it sometimes aided, hindered more than it helped 
the cause of pure religion, while to religious 
liberty it gave little besides the name. 

It was this unhallowed alliance with the state 
which withdrew the eye and the heart from the 
protection of heaven, to rely on an arm of 
flesh, and from the doctrines of heaven to the 
commandments of men, and which filled up 
the church with professors by subscriptions to 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM, 



37 



creeds and conformity to ceremonies, without 
the evangehcal quahfications of repentance tow 
ards God,, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. 
In this bad alHance the sabbath was profaned, 
and a lax morahty prevailed within her sacred 
inclosures, and discipline was neglected, and 
crimes tolerated, in high places and in low; 
while the right of presentation to the ministry, 
by the king and nobility, rendered the ministry 
a sinecure, and filled it, not unfrequently, with 
ignorant, vicious, and heretical men. 

This preposterous exhibition of religion in al- 
liance with the world, obscured her glory, de- 
stroyed her purity, and broke her power, and 
emancipated men from the dominion of Chris- 
tianity to fall back upon scepticism and infi- 
delity. 

In this country we have indeed no union 
of church and state; and yet we have not es- 
caped entirely the amalgamation of the church 
and the world. Just in proportion as, on 
principles of superstition, or formality, or policy, 
men without holiness are recognized as mem- 
bers of the church of Christ, the same results 
will follow: a lax observance of the sabbath, a 
loose morality and formal worship, antinomian 
fatality or Arminian laxity of doctrine, both of 
which alike grieve the spirit and abandon man 
to his own heart's lust. It was this amalgama- 
tion of the church with the world in New- 
England, by a profession without evidence of 
piety, which stopped for seventy years, those 



38 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



revivals with which the colonies commenced, 
and which began again only with the restora- 
tion of the scriptural tenure of membership, by 
a credible profession of holiness. 

It was this amalgamation which brought un- 
converted men into the ministry and introduced, 
first, a lax Calvinisn; and then, Arminianism; 
and then, Arianism; and after that, Socinianism; 
till at length scepticism became the predomi- 
nant cast of those, who were not professedly 
evangelical. 

The attempt making by some to annihilate 
the distinction of church and congregation among 
nominal christians and to comprehend in one 
charitable fellowship entire towns, parishes, or 
congregations, is one of the most efficient me- 
thods which could be devised for putting out 
the light and paralyzing the pov/er of the gos- 
pel, and filling the land with sceptics and in- 
fidels. 

The way to prevent infidelity is not to unspir- 
itualize Christianity, and make it simply a reli- 
gion of forms and movable terms, so accommo- 
dating that unholy men shall find neither re- 
proof nor repellency; not so to bring down the 
church and its doctrines and discipline, that in- 
fidels may find themselves well qualified and 
acceptable brethren, without any change of sen- 
timent or practice. 

Men of sense despise such temporizing policy. 
They know that religion is either a matter of 
wsLst magnitude or nothing; and since these 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



39 



teachers reduce it so nearly to the capacity of 
a cypher, they choose to go for the whole, and 
regard it all as a fable. 

If you search the congregations of the whole 
nation, you will find scepticism to predominate 
most in those places where the claims and sanctions 
of the gospel have been brought down the lowest, 
and the difference between christian and infidel so 
narrowed down, as that in the conjunction, it 
would be difficult to decide whether Christianity 
had been converted to infidelity, or infidelity to 
Christianity. 

Not a few are rendered sceptical by the pro- 
tracted habit of believing the truth without obey- 
ing it. 

The snares of the world, and the deceitful- 
ness of riches, and the lust of other things spring 
up, and choke the word, and it becomes unfruit- 
ful. In this condition of unproductive hearing, 
while the world rises in relative estimation, the 
concerns of eternity recede and disappear: the 
result is a growing insensibility of mind to evi- 
dence. The being of God, and the inspiration of 
the bible, and the realities of the eternal state, 
though certified by evidence, more luminous and 
powerful than ever was concentrated on any other 
subject, assume the position of believed, but un- 
realized truths — like those distant orbs of heaven 
whose light, as yet, has not reached the earth. 
The man has a respect for religion, and its insti- 
tutions; and under the power 6f conscience, there 
is at times solemnity, and impression, and many 



40 CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 

good wishes, and half-formed resolutions, and ear« 
nest desires, and sad regrets, and many fears and 
many hopes of being and doing better; but this 
at length becomes an irksome state. The wane 
of life, and the approaching shades of evening, 
warn the subject that his days are almost num- 
bered, and eternity is near. 

He would prefer becoming a christian by regen- 
eration, if he thought he could; but begins to fear 
that he never shall, — wishes there might be some 
other way — hopes there may be, and begins to 
look around with exploring eye, to see if there is 
not. And immediately, as eagles gather about the 
slain, temptations gather about the ruined man, 
and volunteer their aid. 

And now the truth, heard before with patience9 
begins to become irksome and painful, and he 
hears, with the reaction of excited sensibility. He 
believes, to be sure; but then, the doctrines are 
preached too much, or with too much terror, or 
too much earnestness, or too much severity, or 
personality of reference. He wishes that minis- 
ters would preach the relative duties more, and 
the doctrines less. Still, it is slowly that educa- 
tion, and conscience, and habit let go. In times 
of peril, and of quickened attention to religion, 
conscience awakes, and drives out the intrusions 
of doubt, and shakes his soul with salutary fear. 
He trembles, relents, and is almost persuaded to 
become a christian; but the elastic cord which 
binds him only yields to the pressure, but does 
not break; and when the momentary effort has 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



41 



passed by, returns to its massy strength. And now 
the alternative becomes imperious of meeting or 
disbeheving the terrors of the future state; and 
finally he determines if possible to disbelieve. 
A large proportion of the virulent opponents of 
evangelical doctrine and the bible, are men who 
were once nominal believers, and had, at some 
period of their life, been seriously awakened about 
the concerns of their souls, until despondency, 
and fear, and guilt made them sceptics. 

Undefined and unworthy conceptions of experi- 
mental religion, as associated with the weak- 
nesses and extravagances of indiscreet and fana- 
tical good men, are the occasions of uncertainty 
and doubt to many minds. 

I do not regard as fanaticism, a sudden and 
deep sense of guilt and danger, falling upon 
many minds at the same time, and followed 
speedily with filial sorrow for sin, and affection- 
ate reliance on the Saviour, and a life subse- 
quently consecrated to his service. I have refer- 
ence to great excitement, where there is little 
knowledge; to excessive, unregulated, tumultuous 
feeling — superseding discretion, and enlisting the 
animal susceptibilities, and nervous excitement, 
and spiritual pride — regardless alike of scriptural 
restraint, and the decorum of civilized, social 
intercourse. When such whirlwinds of wildfire 
break out among wood, and hay, and stubble, it 
is called by some a revival of religion; but though 
there should be some religion amid the vast dis- 
order, I call it fanaticism, and the real religion 

3)2 



43 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



of it, like a few kernals of wheat amid moun- 
tains of chaff, set on fire and blown about by 
furious winds. It is owing to such excesses, that 
lasting associations of odium are attached to revi- 
vals, where no such exhibitions are witnessed — 
and where the effects are pure, and undefiled re- 
ligion. 

Another cause of scepticism is found in dissolute 
habits. 

The process is short and obvious. The conflict 
between the man's practice and his conscience is 
too severe to be permanently endured. One or 
the other must conform, or there can be no peace. 
To relinquish his guilty pleasures and sinful ways, 
he is not prepared. These he will not give up, 
and therefore his only alternative is, to deceive 
himself, and still his conscience by false testi- 
mony. 

This commonly is attempted at first, by an en- 
deavor so to expound the bible, as that it shall 
speak peace to the wicked. But it is formed of 
such unbending materials, that though bent out of 
the way> like the elastic bow, it flies back the mo- 
ment the constraining force relaxes. If wrested, it 
requires too much watching, and holding wrong, 
to consist with convenience and comfort; for though 
with great effort it may be stretched upon the 
rack, and compelled to prophesy peace to the 
wicked, no sooner are the engines of torture re- 
laxed, than it thunders out again, "there is no 
peace, saith my God, to the wicked." The bible, 
therefore, to a vicious man, is a most terrific 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



43 



book; with all he can do, and with all the help 
he can obtain to explain it awaj, it keeps him 
in constant alarm: like the fires of a volcano, it 
burns fiercely beneath his feet, and keeps up a 
dreadful sound in his ears, and shakes his soul 
with reiterated and unsubdued alarms — until in 
weariness, and vexation, and desperation, he turns 
furiously, and rushes, vi et armis, upon his unre- 
lenting tormentor. And now he stands erect, and 
sets his mouth against the heavens, and his foot 
on all which is pure and holy; and calls it eman- 
cipation, and the triumph of reason over educa- 
tion, and superstition, and priestcraft. 

Before the epidemic of infidelity passed over 
our land, nearly all the vicious were condemned 
to do penance for their crimes, by a nominal 
belief in Christianity, and the retributions of a 
future state; but since that event, nearly every 
man and woman of dissolute habits have secretly 
or openly sent in their renunciation of the bible^ 
and their adhesion to the sceptical cast. One 
illustration of this kind may stand for thousands. 
A youth, religiously educated, comes in quest of 
employment from the country, to one of our great 
cities. His principles are unperverted, his breath 
is pure, his morals are uncorrupt, his conscience 
is tender, and all his habits are good. But he is 
a stranger; and in his vacant moments, far from 
parents and friends, is solitary; he falls at length 
into the society of amiable, polite, and courteous 
young men; but, alas! adepts in the wiles of temp- 
tation, and the practices of evil, they spread the 



44 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



snare for his feet, and dig the pit for his down- 
fall. At first, he is shocked and recoils; and they, 
nothing daunted, renew their assiduities, and let 
fall upon his ear their sympathy for his faintness 
of heart and superstitious fears. Their sophistry 
and cavils distil as dew upon him, and their sar- 
casm eateth as doth a canker. By little and little 
his heart receives the shock with less repellency; 
and as he sees that they eat and do not die, 
and hears them hoasting of their liberty, the young 
unhallowed desire begins to rise in his bosom, 
and as conscience falters, and his fears subside, 
in evil hour he consents to the enticement, and 
is undone. Still, for a season, a wounded con- 
science pains him, and he passes sleepless nights 
and days of wo. "O that I had never left the 
abodes of purity and come to this guilty city! — 
O that I had rejected and burst away, when I 
faltered and was almost persuaded to do so! O 
my mother! — what wouldst thou say didst thou 
know what thy son is doing? O my sister! didst 
thou see what thy brother has become, how would 
thy pure heart bleed!" 

But the net is upon him, and he struggles only 
to draw closer the toils about him. The stream 
is rolling on with a broader, deeper tide, which 
he resists with a feebler arm — till, in desperation, 
resistance ceases, and he goes downward in the 
full career of augmenting crime. At length his 
guilty pleasures surpass his income, and to meet 
the deficiency, he borrows of his employer. Yes, 
he borrows— without leave, indeed — but to repay; 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



.45 



and borrows again, and repeats the loan, till repay- 
ment becomes impossible— and at length detection 
and shame burst upon him. And now his char- 
acter is gone, his prospects in life are blasted, 
and he becomes misanthropic and desperate. He 
will not reform, and he cannot endure the hell 
which the truth believed kindles in his bosom, 
and resolves to bury his wretchedness in the ruins 
of his faith. He calls to his aid Hume, and Paine, 
and Volney, and Voltaire, and Owen, and Wright, 
and becomes a sceptic; and between the gam- 
bling table and the brothel, and the midnight 
enterprises of the anti-social band, and the jail, 
he spends his days — till at length the hand of 
justice overtakes him, and he dies in a halter. 

I will only add, that implicit confidence in great 
and learned men, who have been unbelievers, is 
a frequent cause of scepticism. 

For though there is no class of men who boast 
more of free and independent thought, than scep- 
tics, there are in fact few men who think less, or 
rely with a more tame, implicit, unthinking con- 
fidence on the opinion of others. They assume 
that these great men have examined the subject 
thoroughly, and candidly, on both sides, and that 
where such minds have been unable to find com- 
petent evidence to rest their faith upon, it must 
be that there is none. But all these premises, so 
important to the conclusion, are assumed without 
evidence, and falsely. The instance is probably yet 
to be found, of a sceptic, who had soberly and care- 
fully, and candidly examined both sides; who had 



46 



CAUSES OF SCEPTICISM. 



studied the history, and design, and evidence, and 
exposition of the bible. Many who have under- 
taken only to read it, to find armor against it, 
have been cured of their scepticism; but I do not 
believe a well authenticated instance can be found 
of a sceptic who was a good biblical scholar, 
and who studied thoroughly the bible and its 
evidences, and remained a sceptic. But if it were 
so, it would be nothing to be relied on, while 
a hundred to one of great mind and learning, 
read and are convinced. Great minds have also 
great and evil hearts, powerful passions, great vices 
of life, and great aversion to the truth, and vio- 
lent prejudices against it, and an indomitable pride, 
revolting against becoming little children, that they ^ 
may enter the kingdom of God. The children of 
our sabbath schools, of twelve years of age, are 
probably much better acquainted with the his- 
tory, and doctrines, and evidences of the bible 
than the ablest deists, who have poured forth tor- 
rents of scorn and invective against it. Nothing 
therefore is more weak, and foolish, and perilous 
than the scepticism which is inspired by confi- 
dence in perverted talent, and unapplied knowl- 
edge, and the decisions of ignorance, and preju- 
dice, and hatred against the word of God. 

In respect to the remedy for scepticism, there 
are two courses. One is the concentration of the 
mind upon admitted truths with reference to 
the immediate exercise of right affections. 

The knowledge requisite to the exercise of the 
affections, is far short of that which is demanded 



HEMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 



47 



to settle all the difficulties and remove all the 
doubts of a speculating mind; and correct 
affections in view of truth are practicable, 
while many clouds hang over particular depart- 
ments of the great subject. A man may under- 
stand and approve the vital parts of the 
constitution of the United States, long be- 
fore he has studied and made up his mind 
on every particular, and his patriotic approbation 
of what he does understand will aid him in the 
study and comprehension of the rest. In like 
manner when the heart shall render to God the 
homage of love and confidence, gratitude and 
obedience, in view of such exhibitions of his 
character, and word and ways, as are compre- 
hended and entitled to affectionate confidence, 
three-fourths of all the speculative difficulties 
will pass away as the mists recede before the 
rising sun, and those which linger will be soon 
adjusted. 

To accomplish this result, however, a rigid in- 
hibition must be laid upon the habit of specu- 
lation. For the present it must be stopped, 
and the whole soul be turned from the effort at 
knowing every thing to the effort at doing the will 
of God, which is known; and to this end, the bible 
should be devoutly read, with a simple reference 
to the understanding and obeying the claims of 
God upon the heart. Let a careful non-in- 
tercourse be maintained with all associates who 
would divert your mind, and bring around 
you the society of intelligent christian friends 



48 



REMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 



and give yourself, at stated times daily, to re- 
tirement, the reading of the Scriptures and fer- 
vent prayer for guidance and illumination. At- 
tend statedly also upon the public worship of 
God, and be careful to avoid every practice 
which would do violence to your conscience, 
and to preserve unbroken and with increasing 
vigor all your serious mental associations; and 
daily and often as the knowledge of duty breaks 
in upon your mind, do it. Give to God the 
affections of your soul, and consecrate your- 
self to his service. Exercise ingenuous sorrow 
for your sins, and rely affectionately upon the 
Saviour. 

The chief difficulty you will have to encoun- 
ter will be the mental eSort to begin, and the 
dijfficulty and irksomeness of a first attempt to 
fix your thoughts upon an unwelcome and long 
neglected subject. It is this reluctance of the 
mind to give itself immediately to the subject, 
and the faintness of heart incident to the early 
stages of effort, upon which temptation concen- 
trates its power to produce indefinite procrasti- 
nation and doubt. But decision will soon be 
followed with augmented power of resolved pur- 
pose, and diminished resistance, and with the 
increased influence of the Spirit, till by the divine 
blessing you come to a calm, intelligent, de- 
lightful consecration of all your powers, to Him 
who loved you and gave himself to die for 
your sins. 

The course here recommended is not a mere 



REMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 49 

theory, but a practical prescription, often re- 
peated, and to my knowledge never without 
auspicious results. I have known young men of 
literary distinction and sceptical habits, who ob- 
tained in this way quickly permanent satisfac- 
tion, which years of discussion and mental scru- 
tiny had failed to bestow: and veterans I have 
known in sceptical debate, who, by a devout 
communion with their own hearts and the bible, 
have come into the possession of abiding confi- 
dence and tranquillity of mind. These results 
are doubtless an illustration of the promise: — if 
any man will do his will he shall know of the 
doctrine, and of what is meant by becoming a 
little child that we may enter the kingdom of 
God. 

The man who will not obey the gospel till he 
can comprehend every thing which appertains 
to the vast system, will probably never obey 
it; while he whose heart follows, with equal 
steps the movements of his understanding will 
find his path shining more and more to the per- 
fect day. 

There are, however, some minds of such a 
temperament and of such inflexible habits, as 
may render the total inhibition of speculation 
extremely difficult. In such a case, while I 
would still urgently recommend the preceding 
course in respect to the devout discipline of 
the heart, by reading and prayer, and efforts to 
feel right, there would seem to be a necessity 
of referring the mind also to the elementary 



50 



REMEDY OP SCEPTICISM. 



principles of accountability and moral govern- 
ment. These are the pillars of the temple^ 
without which, it is but a heap of splendid 
ruins; and no one can be conversant with scep- 
tical minds and not perceive their deficiency in 
elementary knowledge, and exact definitions. 
They always include some positions at variance 
with the principles of moral government, and 
leave out principles, which are indispensable to 
a just conception of the subject, and like miss- 
ing a figure in an arithmetical process, it vitiates 
the result. But the mistake having been made, 
and persisted in, and incorporated in every train 
of thought, is not likely to be detected by the 
subject alone. The aid of some intelligent friend 
is needed, who, in a free conversation, may 
point out the assumptions, and supply the defi- 
ciencies, and put the definitions and reasonings 
in order; and they will move on unbiassed, to 
a dehghtful result of mental satisfaction. The 
elementary principles of the Christian system 
are, like the elements of all the great works of 
Heaven, — few, obvious, and of subhme simplicity; 
and I have never known them disencumbered 
and fairly presented to the minds of sceptical 
men, without gratifying results. 

These elements of theology are comprehended 
in just conceptions of the decrees of God — as 
having for their object an intelhgent universe, 
composed of free agents, and governed by per- 
fect laws, perfectly administered, including the 
remedial system for the maintenance of law, and 



REMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 



51 



the reformation and forgiveness of the guilty. 
They are easily understood, and when these 
great lights in the moral heavens arise, they dis- 
pel all darkness, and perplexity, and douhto 

The temptations to atheism, and fatalism, and 
to heresy and error, pass away ; and reason act- 
ing upon correct premises, arrives with ease and 
delight at consistent and satisfying results. _ And 
the conscience does its office, and the heart feels its 
accountability, and obligation, and guilt; and by 
the power of truth and the holy spirit, the will 
signifies its adhesion and the affections flow forth 
in those channels of benevolence and complacen- 
cy, which Heaven has provided for obedient 
minds. It is not enough, however, that the 
mind, long vexed and bewildered, should be 
guided once only through the labyrinth out of 
the wilderness into the open field and the light 
of day. The perceptions of the way might fade 
or the memory of old associations might return, 
to bias and bewilder the mind. The process 
should be travelled over in the society of ex- 
perienced friendship many times, till the truth 
becomes famihar; till all its impressions remain, 
and its hght shines serenely, and all the per- 
verting associations of error fall as scales from 
the eyes and chains from the soul. And with 
such aid where the commitment of party or the 
pride of reason, or maUgnant animosity, or in- 
veterate vicious habits do not prevent, the result 
is as sure as any thing which depends on the 



52 



REMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 



unperverted action of evidence and moral in- 
fluence upon the human mind. 

Where no such guidance of experienced friend- 
ship can be had, no alternative remains but to 
add to the first prescription inflexibly adhered 
to, the careful study of the best elementary 
authors on mental philosophy and moral govern- 
ment, and the evidences of Christianity. This 
though a somewhat protracted and laborious 
course, is the only alternative, and is justified 
and enforced by the immensity of the interest 
at stake. 

Paley's Natural Theology stands unrivaled as 
a neat, copious, conclusive argument, of the ex- 
istence and operation of the omniscient design, 
almighty power, and unmingled benevolence of 
an eternal mind. But for just and comprehensive 
views of the first principles of religion, the 
Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion, by 
Butler, is probably unrivaled by any product 
of the human mind; and studied thoroughly, 
and honestly, and prayerfully, by any mind of 
sufficient power to be entitled to speculate at 
all, will guide it out of darkness into light. 

The motives to adopt some course to alleviate 
and confirm a wavering mind, are numerous and 
powerful. 

It is a condition empty of enjoyment 
and attended with great mental desolation. 
Sceptical men are never satisfied with their spe- 
culations, and are never happy, and are often 
miserable. The mind was made for the acquisi- 



REMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 



53 



tion of knowledge; — and that knowledge concern- 
ing which they douht — the being, character, law, 
and government of God, is, of all knowledge, 
the most interesting in itself, and the most im- 
portant. Scepticism therefore dooms the intellect 
to sterility and famine, and the heart to va- 
cancy, and the soul to suspense, on this most 
important subject. 

It is also an entirely gratuitous deprivation of 
good, and endurance of evil. 

The reiterated complaint, that there are so 
many opinions on the subject that nothing can 
be known, is as unfounded as it is pusillanimous. 
Were opinions the only source of knowledge, 
and to be weighed by the pound, or to be 
counted by the dozen, to decide by the suf- 
frage of number what is true, the conclusion 
might be well founded; but facts and evidence 
are the material of knowledge, and the elementary 
truths of revelation are just as plain, and their 
results just as easily attained, and just as satis- 
factory and certain, as on any other subject. 
On the same condition that knowledge can be 
obtained in natural philosophy, it can be obtained 
in theology. Honest, persevering application is the 
universal condition of knowledge in every de- 
partment of the kingdom of God; and the theologi- 
cal department is just as accessible to study, and 
just as certainly rewards industry, as any other* 
At the entrance it is written, " If thou shalt incline 
thine ear to wisdom, and apply. thy heart to un- 
derstanding; if thou criest after knowledge, and 



54 REMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 

liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou 
seekest her as silver and searchest for her as for 
hid treasure; then shalt thou understand the fear 
of the Lord and find the knowledge of God."^ 
By far the greatest portion of intelligent minds 
who have candidly and thoroughly investigated, 
have escaped indecision and doubt, and multi- 
tudes by the same means have emerged from 
darkness, and come into the possession of a set- 
tled confidence. It were a libel on heaven, to sup- 
pose that it has thrown wide open all the avenues 
of natural knowledge and lit up lamps about 
them, and shrouded with impenetrable darkness the 
threshold of moral government — the gateway 
of eternity. God is not the author of scepti- 
cism. He has not thrust out orbs of intelligence 
to roll about him in blackness of darkness. It is 
his desire to manifest himself to the minds which 
he has made, by pouring out floods of light around 
him, through the medium of his works and his 
word; and the wayfaring man, though a fool, need 
not err. 

To every sceptical man, I would say then in 
conclusion, — the subjects upon which your mind 
wavers are too important to be permitted to hang 
in doubt. You cannot prove that there is no 
God, or that the soul is not immortal, and accoun- 
table, and depraved, needing an atonement and 
sanctification, to escape everlasting ruin and ob- 
tain eternal Hfe. But before you reject the sub- 
ject, you ought to be well ascertained that the in- 

*Prov. ii, 2, 3, 4, 5, 



REMEDY OF SCEPTICISM. 



55 



spiration of the bible and its representations of 
human character and the future state are not true. 
Were your titles to your earthly estate doubtful, 
that fact would wake up all your energies to put 
the matter out of doubt. If you had as much evi- 
dence in the night that your house is on fire, as 
you have that you are a sinner and that God will 
by no means clear the guilty, would you cry 
peace and sleep on because you did not know to 
a certainty that it was your house, which was 
burning? Would you pass a road beset probably 
with robbers, because you had some doubts whether 
they would be there or not? If you had as much 
evidence of poison in your cup as you have that 
Christianity is true and scepticism ruinous, would 
you drink because you did not certainly know 
that there was death in it? It is not enough that 
you do not know the bible to be true. You 
ought to know it to be false, before you reject it; 
seeing if it is false, nothing is lost, and all is lost, 
if it be true, and you reject it. 



LECTURE III. 
POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



PSALM, XIV. 1. 

THE FOOL HATH SAID IN HIS HEART, THERE IS NO GOD. 

Moral Atheism is the aversion of the heart to 
God and his government. It implies no impotency 
of intellect; but its perversion, by the obliquity of 
the heart. It is not the understanding which revolts 
against evidence; but the heart which revolts against 
holiness and moral obligation. The language of the 
heart consists in feeling; and to say in the heart, "no 
God," is to wish there were none. This aversion to 
the existence of God, springs however, from no disin- 
terested malignity to his being, provided it implied 
no law, accountability, guilt, and danger. 

It is against God as a moral governor, reigning 
over men by a law which is holy, and just, and 
good — that the heart of the fool makes insurrection. 
Its language is, — no accountability — no fear — no 
restraint — no self-denial — no change of heart and 

57 



58 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



life, to escape perdition— and no reward or punish- 
ment in a future state according to deeds. 

Speculative Atheism is the actual belief of what 
the heart thus desires. It is giving up the under- 
standing to strong delusion, to believe a lie. 

The first aberration of alienated mind, was mani- 
fested in licentiousness and violence; the second in 
idolatry — the worship by visible symbols of local 
di^ 'nities inhabiting the several departments of na- 
ture. The increase of philosophy united these scat- 
tered energies into one almighty mind, from which 
inferior minds were emanations, like sparks from 
heavenly bodies, to be in due time absorbed again. 
Gradually however, as sense prevailed, and the dark- 
ness deepened, the intelligence of voluntary action 
of mind went out, and left only an unthinking, all- 
pervading energy — the soul of the world, and the 
primum mobile of all motion in the universe, accor- 
ding to the attributes and laws of self-existent and 
eternal nature. 

This is Pantheism, which makes the world God, 
and God the world. It is the atheism which was in 
France, the offspring of perverted Christianity; and 
it is substantially the form which the infidelity of 
S this country has assumed — many sceptics, but few 
deists. Most who doubt are as much unsettled con- 
cerning the being of a God, immortality of the soul 
and a future state, as about the bible. It is denom- 
inated political atheism, because in France and here 
its theories extend to the modification of the religious, 
civil, and social state of man — contemplating nothing 
less than the abolition of marriage and the family 



POLITICAL ATHEISM, 



59 



state, separate property, civil government, and all 
sense of accountability, and all religious worship — 
an effort to turn the world up side down, and empty 
it of every institution, thought, feeling and action 
which has emanated from Christianity, to join man- 
kind solely under the auspices of atheism. 

That such associations exist and are acting in cor- 
respondence, and are extending themselves through 
the country, is a matter of notoriety. That they 
can no longer, with safety, be despised, or permitted 
to move on without some effort to apprise the com- 
munity of their character and designs, is equally cer- 
tain; for though no doubt public sentiment, when 
brought to act upon them, will render them harmless, 
it is no less true that the reality and nature of these 
associations must be understood, that this great cor- 
rector may act upon them. 

It will be the object therefore, of this discourse, to 
illustrate the doctrines, the follies, and dangers, of 
Political Atheism. 

The creed inscribed on the black flag around 
which these men have rallied, is short and dreadful. 
It is raised high, and floats on the breeze, proclaiming 
in capitals, to every eye — That there is no God — 

NO resurrection NO FUTURE STATE NO FREE 

AGENCY NO ACCOUNTABILITY NO VIRTUE NO SIN 

NO DEVIL NO HEAVEN NO HELL AND THAT DEATH 

IS AN ETERNAL SLEEP. That man is a thinking 
reasoning machine, governed mechanically, accor- 
ding to the laws of animated matter. That evidence 
governs the understanding, and motives the will, oh 
,the same principle that percussion moves the pebble, 



60 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



and weights turn the scales, and that all events are 
made certain by a material, mechanical necessity. 
There is nothing in the universe but matter, is the 
one article of the atheist's creed. 

The pohtical part of this creed is, — That all coer- 
cive government by law is a contravention of liberty, 
and arbitrary and unjust: — That separate property 
is but a limb of the feudal system, and an anti-repub- 
lican monopoly :^ — That marriage is an unreasonable 
restraint on liberty, and ought to be abolished; and 
the family to be disbanded, as the citadel of selfish- 
ness and separate property, and all those aristocratic 
monopolies for the subversion of liberty, the perpe- 
tuity of priest-craft, and the vile union of church and 
state: — That the fear of God, is a delusion; con- 
science, superstition; natural affection, the prejudice 
of education; chastity, pusillanimous; and incon- 
tinence, magnanimous. 

To those who are not initiated in these mysteries, 
it may be a matter of terrific curiosity to understand 
how all this is to be accomplished. An outline only 
can be given. 

The belief in God's existence is to be obliterated — 
by exposing the sophistry that universal design is 
evidence of an intelligent designer, and accounting 
for the existence of things by the agency of almighty 
chance. The Bible is to be driven X)ut of circulation, 
by the detection and exposure of its imposture, absur- 
dity, and pernicious influence. The Sabbath is to 
be obliterated, as a waste of time, and its place sup- 
plied by occasional holidays for amusement ana 
pleasure. Marriage is to be hooted out of society 



POLITICAL ATHEISM* 



61 



as a contemptible usurpation of liberty, while the 
entire race of men, free as other animals, wander 
over the great common field, and hold promiscuous 
intercourse, and eat, and drink, and propagate, and 
die. The property of the world is to become a 
common stock, to which each is to contribute, by his 
labor, and from which he is to receive his rations of 
food and raiment in due season. The progeny of 
these emancipated animals, whose existence they 
may choose to permit, is to be educated at the public 
expense, and legislators, instead of enacting laws for 
the government of men, are to be occupied in ad- 
ministering those circumstances, whose mechanical 
power in education, shall effectuate his perfection, 
and introduce the atheistical political millennium. 
In the application of this nurture and admonition 
all are to be made equal in education, and continued 
equal in honor and property, that there may be no 
superiority to occasion pride, and no inferiority to 
occasion envy, but one great plain, without protu- 
berance or indentation, over which the whole team, 
equally yoked, may move on to annihilation in blessed 
equanimity. 

This hopeful change in human affairs is to be ac- 
complished by the indefatigable and systematic effort 
of the initiated, to revolutionize public sentiment, 
until it shall speak at the polls and in the halls of 
legislation, and vote out of the world, God, and the 
Bible, and the Sabbath and public worship, and the 
gospel ministry, and marriage, and the family, and 
all inequality of knowledge ^nd honor and profit, 
and all government but the government of circum- 



62 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



stances, to make way for the millennium of reason 
and nature, in which man may live without God, and 
obey the flesh without shame, and die without fear. 

In this crusade against Christianity and heaven, 
the press is to be deeply enlisted; and by period- 
icals, and newspapers, and tracts, and caricature 
prints, every where disseminated, is to dispel the 
existing darkness, pour daylight on the hu- 
man mind, and innoculate the people with the 
virus of indomitable liberty, to whose ferocious 
heart and fiery eye, religious and civil liberty, 
and inequahty of property, the restraints of law, 
and virtue itself, shall be regarded as usurpa- 
tion and treason, and the pavements, which in 
Europe are torn up to batter down despotism, 
shall here be turned against the temples of God 
and the laws of the land. As a powerful auxil- 
iary in this mark of universal emancipation, 
woman is to be enlisted — ^woman, unperverted, the 
pattern of whatsoever things are pure and lovely, 
but herself corrupted, a paragon of deformity, a 
demon in human form. 

But as Mahomet, when deception moved him on 
to power, shortened the process of conversion by 
force, so these friends of universal liberty, when 
power shall second inclination, intend and now 
threaten to put out the sun of righteousness and 
compel us to float through life in the stream of licen- 
tious animalism. Upon both parts of this system, 
its falsehood and its folly, I must be permitted to 
make a few observations. 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



63 



Under the first head, I have the following remarks 
to offer: — 

1. It is a thing eminently to be desired, that there 
should be a supreme benevolent intelhgence, who is 
the Creator and moral Governor of the universe, 
whose subjects and kingdom shall endure forever. 

The want of some intellect above our own, and 
of social affections more copious and pure than man 
can bestow, and of guidance and protection, and the 
intercourse of obedience and reward, and grateful 
affection, is what the whole nature of man indicates, 
and his whole soul pants after. We feel our little- 
ness in presence of the majestic elements of nature, 
and our weakness compared with their power, and 
our lonehness in the vast universe, unenlighted, un- 
guided and unblessed by any intelligence superior to 
our own. We behold the flight of time, the passing 
fashion of the world, and the gulf of annihilation cur- 
tained with the darkness of an eternal night. At 
the side of this dark vortex which covers with deep 
oblivion the past, and impenetrable darkness the 
future, nature shudders and draws back, and the soul, 
with sinking heart, looks mournfully around upon 
this fair creation, and up to these beautiful heavens, 
and in plaintive accents demands: Is there, then, 
no deliverance from this falling-back into nothing^ 
Must this conscious being cease? — this reasoning - 
thinking power, — and stop its action, and these warm 
affections, their dehghtful movements? Must this 
eye close in an endless night, and this heart fall back 

upon everlasting insensibility?- O, thou cloudless 

sun, and ye far distant stars, in all your journey ings 



64 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



m light, have ye discovered no blessed intelligence 
who called you into being, lit up your fires, marked 
your orbits, wheels you in your courses; around whom 
ye roll, and whose praises ye silently celebrate? Are 
ye empty worlds and desolate, the sport of chance; 
or like our sad earth, are ye peopled with inhab- 
itants, waked up to a brief existence, and hurried 
reluctantly, from an almost untasted being back to 
nothing? O that there were a God, who made you, 
greater than ye all, whose being in yours we might 
see, whose intelhgence we might admire, whose 
will we might obey, and whose goodness we might 
adore! — Such except, where guilt seeks anni- 
hilation as the choice of evils, is the unperverted, 
universal longing after God and immortality. 

2. There is no evidence that there is not a self- 
existent eternal mind, who is the creator and provi- 
dential and moral govprnor of the universe. Some- 
thing it is admitted must have been eternal — And 
it may as well be self-existent mind as self-existent 
matter. It is as easy to conceive of a mind self-ex- 
istent and eternal, which shall systematize the uni- 
verse, as of a self-existent eternal systematized mate- 
rial system. That which exists without beginning 
and without cause, cannot be reasoned about, and 
may be one thing, as well as another. It may as 
well be believed that there is a self-existent volun- 
tary mind, as that there is a self-existent organized 
universe. 

3. The evidence of the existence of a self-exis- 
tent mind is as great as it would be if what we behold 
were in fact the product and evidence of such an 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



65 



existence. The only evidence of invisible intelligent 
mind is the manifestation of design; and the only 
evidence of design is the adaptation of means to 
ends, in such a manner as cannot be accounted for 
by accident, without the absurdity of supposing ef- 
fects without a cause. 

But now if there were a God who spread abroad 
these heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, 
and balanced the solar system, and sent his handy 
workmanship from its stupendous developement, in 
guiding great events down through all the grada- 
tions and departments of nature^ to the confines of 
the minuteness of nothing, he could not, by the 
adapt'^vtion of means to ends, more clearly or fully 
declare his eternal power and godhead. Every page 
is covered and crowded with plans and their execu- 
tion. If design then is evidence of; a designer — we 
might exclaim whither shall we go from thy presence? 

4. The supposition that all these indications of 
design are the results of the unthinking undesigning 
energies of nature, involves the contradiction of sup- 
posing an endless series of effects without a cause ; 
for though nature might be supposed to move 
without thought, uniform and all-pervading design 
is a kind of movement to be accounted for only from 
mind. You might as well account for the existence 
of change without cause, as for uniform and univer- 
sal design without mind. Design without intelligence 
is therefore an effect without a cause; and therefore 
a universal conatus of nature cannot be the cause 
of the order, and beauty, and design which meet 
the eye on every page of nature's book. 
f2 



66 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



5. There are no facts which go to prove the exis- 
tence of design without a designer. 

The instinct of the hee does indeed produce her 
mathematically constructed dwelling; but that in- 
stinct itself demands or it indicates an intelligent 
cause: for no one will suppose that the hee has stu- 
died mathematical figures, or that unguided by mind, 
they would grow up under her instinctive industry. 

The affinities of matter, which unite particles in 
mathematical forms, is admitted to indicate design; 
but as matter itself does not think, it indicates the 
arrangement of a mind not its own. 

6. The validity of design, as evidence of an in- 
telligent designer, is universally admitted in respect 
to man. 

It is admitted that man is a rational, intelligent, 
voluntary being acting by design. But the only 
evidence of it is contained in his works. Blot out 
evidence of design and you throw over mind the 
veil of idiocy. The evidence of an inteUigent 
mind in man, contained in the evidence of design in 
his works, is conclusive. 

No one has hardihood to examine cities, manufac- 
tories, farms, turnpikes, steamboats, railroads, book- 
stores, fleets and armies, and deny to man the visita- 
tions of reason. But the only difference in the argu- 
ment, as apphed to men and to God, is the extent 
and complication of a universal design, above the 
narrow limits of human intellect. 

We only add that the evidence of the being of a 
supreme intelligent mind, from universal design, is 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



67 



not the result of multiplied probabilities; but is a 
strict demonstration of the being of God. 

That no effect can exist without a cause, is a 
self-evident proposition. That design, produced by 
undesigning causes, is an effect without a cause, is 
equally self-evident; and that universal design indi- 
cates a universal designer as clearly as human design 
indicates a limited designer; and that the universal 
designer, whose plans pervade the universe, is the 
self-existent, eternal, almighty mind, who moves and 
governs all. 

The folly of Political Atheism consists in the 
reversing of all this reasoning — In teaching that 
effects may exist without a cause, and universal 
design without a designer. The existence of a 
watch, proves the existence of an intelligent mind; 
but the mechanism of the universe proves nothing. 

It happened unexplained, and came without cause, 
from chaos, into order and beauty. The conjec- 
tures concerning the progress of this great accident, 
are various. One only can be given; but thisj 
though short, is full of wonders. 

Sometime ago, after chaos and old night had 
reigned undisturbed from eternity, and matter had 
fermented, and tossed, and rolled into almost infinite 
forms, it happened to fall, for the first time, into just 
those relations which constituted the volcanic power; 
when, in a moment, an explosion took place, loud as 
ten thousand thunders, which sent out innumerable 
suns, flying in fusion through space, streaming athwart 
the darkness their baleful light, till they stopped and 



68 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



became fixed stars in the glorious firmament above* 
But they carried in their bosom the sad accidents 
which gave them birth; and new throes ensued, 
sending out around them comets, and planets, and 
satellites, all moving in elliptic orbits, with arithmeti- 
cal accuracy, so that for ages past, and for ages to 
come, the almanac discloses their movements with 
as exact accuracy as the clock tells of time. What 
chance it was which checked their flight, and by a 
resolution of force, wheeled them round in their 
elliptic career — or why, the centripetal power ex- 
hausted, they did not fall back, with accelerated 
momentum, into the horrible crater whence they 
sprung — or where that mass may be, which could 
furnish matter, of which to make the universe, and 
sustain the reaction of sending it out; that mighty 
cannon, whose shot are suns, and worlds; our phi- 
losophers have not yet discovered. But so it hap- 
pened — they were exploded, and as yet they have 
not fallen back. 

And now, leaving the suns, and orbs, and other 
systems, we decend to trace the history of our own 
mother earth, whom we meet reeking from her 
recent explosion, her waves of fire tossing and 
raging; which as^ they cooled, crusted and stood 
upright as an heap, and became the perpetual 
hills and everlasting mountains. The weightier 
masses sunk downward, towards the centre, with 
lighter .and lighter deposits above, leaving the crust 
when pulverized, for fallow ground and harvests* 
As yet, however, the earth was without form 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



69 



and void, and a hideous nakedness spread over 
its late burning surface. When, strange to tell, 
grass, and trees, sprang up and began to orna- 
ment the hills and carpet the valleys — and hard 
on the footsteps of this wonder, trod another; the 
waters teemed with organic life, which lashed with 
oar the pUant wave, and sported in the deep; — 
and suddenly the hills sent down to the valleys, 
and the valleys sent back to the hills, the bleating 
of flocks and herds; while the groves sent forth 
the joyous notes of birds and insects. All these, 
in grand concert, burst out upon the silence of 
nature, and all, as they needed, waited on al- 
mighty chance, who gave them their meat in due 
season. 

The organization of this delighted choir, was such 
as demanded respiration, and the flowing of a warm 
blood, for which an elastic atmosphere was needed; 
and it happened, as the earth cooled and consoli- 
dated, that several gases escaped from confinement, 
so exactly of the same specific gravity, and blessed 
with such social and friendly dispositions, that they 
agreed to exist in partnership, and to surround the 
earth, and most benevolently to volunteer their aid 
for respiration. Each, alone, deadly to life, but 
united, its sustaining power. 

This world of breathing animation, rose up with 
optics — camera obscura in the head, to pencil inside 
the images of objects without. When, lo, the orb 
of day, when he fled from his heated prison, forgot 
not in his panic to take with him stores of light, 
manufactured for immediate use, which ever since. 



70 



POLITICAL ATHEISM* 



he has been pouring out unexhausted, in marvellous 
abundance. Light, so dexterously compounded of 
seven colors, as to be colorless, and well adapted to 
the purposes of vision. 

But amid this exuberance of animated being, there 
vras not a man to till the ground or admire the beau- 
ties of nature. Behold then another wonder — the 
fortuitous concourse of atoms, before the earth so 
cooled as to stop fermentation, produced a human 
skeleton; around which, with kind affinity, came the 
sinews and the muscles, and took their place. The 
lungs for breathing, and the arteries and veinslto 
carry around the vital fluid, offered their aid, and 
were accepted. The nervous system — semi-animal, 
semi-spiritual — took its middle place, as arbitrator be- 
tween the soul and the body. And to cover what 
otherwise had been unsightly, kind nature provided 
a blanket, and with kind sympathy threw its velvet 
covering over the whole. The eye, too, lit itself up 
accidentally, just at the moment it was wanted, and 
the socket stood excavated for its reception, and the 
mucus warm to make it easy, and the ligament to 
tie it in. The mouth, opened at the right time to 
prevent suffocation, and in the right place for speech, 
and ornamented with double rows of ivory for mas- 
tication. While nature's self, with pencil dipped in 
the colours of heaven, stood by, well pleased to put 
upon her beauteous workmanship, the finish of the 
sparkhng eye, and rosy cheek, and ruby lip. All 
this, however, had constituted only a beauteous ani- 
mal, but for the glorious accident of a machine for 
thinking, which happened to pass that way, and 



POLITICAL ATHEISM. 



71 



consented to stop a little, and make an experiment 
of its powers in the upper department of this mar- 
vellous product of chance. It took its place, and 
swung the pendulum, and has continued to go, with 
surprising accuracy, though latterly, in some instan- 
ces, it has seemed to be out of order and to stand 
in need of some little rectification in respect to its 
reasoning powers. 



I 



I 



LECTURE IV. 

THE 

PERILS OF ATHEISM 

TO 

THE NATION. 



Q TIMOTHY, III. 1—7. 

THIS KNOW ALSO, THAT DJ THE LAST DAYS PERILOUS TIMES SHALL 
come: for men shall be lovers of their own selves, COVE- 
TOUS, BOASTERS, PROUD, BLASPHEMERS, DISOBEDIENT TO PARENTS, 
UNTHANKFUL, UNHOLY, WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION, TRUCE- 
BREAKERS, FALSE ACCUSERS, INCONTINENT, FIERCE, DESPISERS OF 
THOSE THAT ARE GOOD, TRAITORS, HEADY, HIGH-MINDED, LOVERS 
OF PLEASURES MORE THAN LOVERS OF GOD; HAVING A FORM 
GODLINESS, BUT DENYING THE POWER THEREOF: FROM SUCH TURN 
AWAY. FOR OF THIS SORT ARE THEY WHICH CREEP INTO HOUSES, 
AND LEAD CAPTIVE SILLY WOMEN LADEN WITH SINS, LED AWAY 
WITH DIVERS lusts; EVER LEARNING, AND NEVER ABLE TO COME 
TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH. 

Such are the men whose assault upon Chris- 
tianity was predicted 1800 years ago, anti fulfilled 
by the atheistic conspiracy in France against the 
being and government of God. The result terrified 
the world, and sent the experimentalists howling 
out of time, or crying to the rocks and the moun- 
tains to fall upon them. ; 

Recently, the disciples of this school, imported 
and indigenous, having recovered from their panic, 
G 73 



74 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



wish to repeat their experiment upon our repub- 
lican institutions. For even here the conjunction 
of circumstances is not right. ReHgion and law, 
those ulcers of the body politic, remain; and need 
to be excoriated, that healthful atheistic liberty may, 
in its deeds of glory, rival all the past achieve- 
ments of earth and heaven. It is not my purpose 
to insinuate that all men who are sceptical, or who 
are deists, or that even all who may doubt or disbe- 
lieve the being of a God, have a distinct partici- 
pation in the views and plans of political atheists; 
or are debased by the loathsome profligacy which 
characterizes generally the real adepts in this cru- 
sade against human and divine institutions. There 
are many whom the influence of Christianity has 
kept back from presumptuous sins, and who, by 
their past habits and existing alliances, would be 
withheld from an attempt to turn the world 
upside down; and I am not surprised at the incre- 
dulity expressed by some, as to the reality of a 
conspiracy in our land, against the being of God, 
and our civil, and social, and religious institutions. 

I can only say that in Boston and New York, 
Philadelphia and Baltimore, and through New 
England and the middle states, their organization 
was as open and as well known as that of Chris- 
tian churches, and no formal proof was needed. 
At the time these lectures were delivered, their 
plans were avowed in their books, and tracts, and 
newspapers, and inculcated in their temples of reason, 
discussed in their weekly meetings, and threatened 
as an achievement which was near, even at the 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



75 



door. It was boasted that in Boston there were 
six hundred men on their side, ready to pledge 
their property for the propagation of their princi- 
ples. And they actually petitioned the legisla- 
ture for the charter of a college to be estab- 
lished under their auspices. Of this combination 
many were young men, whose perversion extended 
sorrow and alarm through the city, and created 
for a time that kind of febrile action which pre- 
cedes contempt of law and insurrection. About 
this time the female apostle of atheistic liberty 
visited the city, and her lectures were thronged 
not only by men, but even by females of respec- 
table standing. And the effects of these lectures 
on such listeners, was not the mere gratification 
of curiosity. She made her converts, and that 
too not among the low and the vicious alone. 
Females of education and refinement — females of 
respectable standing in society — those who had 
been the friends and associates of my own chil- 
dren — were numbered and are now among her 
votaries, and advocate her sentiments. 

In New York the effects of such efforts were 
still greater. Under the imposing title of "the 
working men," the campaign was opened at the 
polls, and the Atheistic ticket came near to 
succeeding. About the same time, a society of 
philanthropists published a report on the miser- 
able condition of abandoned females in the city, 
which produced a pubKc meeting, attended by 
such high threats and furious denunciations, and 
emanations of atheistic liberty, and indications of 



76 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



popular fury as threatened to supersede the pro- 
tection of law, and to expose men of self-denying 
benevolence to personal violence. 

Such also for a time was the influence of the 
invidious distinction between working men and 
others, and of the infidel trumpet-call to all the 
envious and vicious poor, that to my certain 
knowledge, serious apprehension was felt by the 
most judicious and sagacious men, and mea,sures 
were adopted to balance these invidious associa- 
tions of working men, by other associations, of 
correct principles, and thus to paralyze their power; 
and by lyceums, and libraries, and public lectures, 
to draw the youthful population of our cities 
from such pernicious influence to the paths of 
real science and virtue. It was as a humble 
efibrt in this countervailing movement, that these 
lectures were composed and delivered, in which, 
at the time, no one supposed that the writer did 
"so fight as one that beateth the air." 

The unholy alliance has I doubt not felt the 
results of these various efforts, in the reaction of 
a virtuous public sentiment and has been 
abashed. But they are not disbanded — they have 
not abandoned their object. Their books, and tracts, 
and newspapers are still at work, and they are 
waiting only the recurrence of such a moral 
atmosphere as may favor the bursting out ojf the 
contagion with new virulence and power. 

It is the testimony of the female champion of 
atheistic liberty, whose opportunity to feel the 
pulse of moral evil in the nation was unequalled, 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



77 



and whose spirit-stirring eloquence was well calcu- 
lated to apply the torch to the concealed train, that 
atheistical education must and will come either by 
public sufifrage or by revolution. 

I wish it however to be understood, that it 
is not so much the power of this organization, 
as to its numerical force, or even its influence at 
the polls directly, that is to be feared, as its effect 
in creating and extending a poisonous leaven, which 
gradually and silently, but really and effectually 
shall undermine the faith and moral principle of 
the nation and prepare society for dissolution; — 
which, in some eventful crisis may suspend the 
attraction of the divine government, and cut the 
cords which bind us together as a nation. 

Their numbers, however, are not to be despised, — 
including those who are intelligently committed, 
and those whose hearts and habits of evil so 
sympathize with them, as to fall into and swell the 
channel of their river by a natural affinity and 
a; copious flood. Were all whom their designs 
and a coincidence of favoring circumstances might 
bring under their influence drawn out, it would 
develop a terrific numerical and physical power. 
The wisdom of God is in nothing more conspic- 
uous than in the maintenance of his cause against 
vast majorities often of infuriated opposition, by 
keeping back the bad affinities from an organized 
concentration. 

It is the tendency then of political atheism to 
prostrate our repubUcan institutions, which I am ta 
illustrate in this lecture — the tendency to stimulate 
g2 



• 

78 PERILS OF ATHEISM* 



and augment the powers of evil, and to suspend 
the restraining action of the divine government, 
until self-government becomes impossible, and rev- 
olution and anarchy follow, and a despotic govern- 
ment closes the scene. 

And whether man be regarded as a mere 
machine, and motive as acting on mechanical 
principles; or whether he be considered as a 
free, accountable, immortal mind, — acting under 
the responsibihties of eternity; poHtical atheism 
must differ in its results immensely from Chris- 
tianity, and its influence be most baleful: — 
for if it is by motive, as a mechanical power^ 
that it moves to good and deters from evil, what 
is the motive of a momentary being, to an exis- 
tence without end? A drop to the ocean — an 
atom to the universe. But if mind is voluntary 
and accountable in its action, and motive is the 
good or evil associated by a divine constitution with 
holiness or sin, through endless ages, then is the 
power of the divine government proportioned to 
the strength of desire for good and aversion to 
evil, and to the magnitude, and certainty, and 
duration of its rewards and its penalties — atheism 
then lets out a race of famished, infuriated ani- 
mals, goaded by instinct, and unrestrained by 
prospective hopes and fears, to rend and devour, 
and destroy, and be destroyed, as one class of 
insects sweeps away another. How can a republic 
of such animals be sustained — which no eye of 
God inspects — no law restrains — ^upon which no 
hope of eternity dawns, and no fear darkens? 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



79 



The necessity of intelligence and virtue to the 
perpetuity of republican liberty is as real as it is 
proverbial. Despotism may coerce the obedience 
of dark ferocious mind against inclination, and lay 
its heavy hand upon the boiling wrath within. But in 
republics public sentiment will rule ; and what will 
that public sentiment be which emanates from the 
heart of man, unchastened by the hopes and fears 
, of eternity, and undirected by coercive humaii 
laws, and unhumanized by the kind affinities of 
the family, and unstimulated to industry by the 
charm of personal acquisition, possession, and en- 
joyment? Naked, ferocious, human nature, con- 
glomerated and condensed, in respect to all its 
tendencies to evil. Rivers do not more copiously 
and irresistibly bear onward their burthen to the 
ocean, or the rock, loosed from the cliff, with 
more certain desolation thunder down the preci- 
pice, than man tempted and unrestrained, rushes 
on to dissipation and ruin. 

All governments originate m the necessities of 
self-defence against the violent evil propensities 
of man. Walled cities, armies, navies, and notes 
and bonds, and prisons and death, are memo- 
rials indicative of the indomitable propensity of 
man to evil. It is but a little too which law can 
preserve and protect from ingenious fraud, or 
successful violence. It has no sleepless omniscient 
eye, no omnipresent, omnipotent arm. Such 
delinquents only can be punished, as can be 
arrested and convicted by a regular process of 
evidence. A government is needed to corroborate 



80 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



the public laws of men, which can look in upon 
the heart and intimidate and stifle the young 
desire of evil— which can rouse up fear about 
the path of guilt — and tranquillize the madness of 
the heart. 

Pagan legislators felt the necessity of such 
aid — and bad as were the characters of their ficti- 
tious divinities, the sanctions of their religion 
were a blessing compared with the philosophy of 
Epicurus, which turned off from the world the 
inspection of the Gods, and the retributions of the 
future state. Its prevalence in Greece caused her 
downfall and in the Roman empire was followed 
by the extinction of Roman patriotism, and by 
that enervating voluptuousness, which under- 
mined the republic and introduced the despo- 
tism of the C^sars. It was an era of mad 
ambition and revolution, and proscription, and 
blood — a political earthquake, from which the 
republic never recovered, and whose agitations 
ceased not, till she sought repose in the calm of 
despotism. Among the Jews, the reign of the same 
philosophy was to morals, what the reign of the 
plague is in a great city- — every thing good died 
in its pestilent atmosphere, while all which was evil 
grew rank and abundant. 

There never has been but one government pro- 
fessedly atheistic. The National Assembly of France, 
in the commencement of the revolution, appointed 
a committee to inquire and report whether there 
were or ought to be a God; and the committee 
reported, that there could be no liberty on earth 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



81 



while there was beheved to be a God in Heaven; and 
that there is no God; and that death is an eternal 
sleep. The assembly adopted the report, abolished 
the Sabbath, burnt the Bible, instituted the decade, 
and ordained the worship of the Goddess of liberty, 
in the person of a yile woman. But the conse- 
quences were too terrible to be endured: it con- 
verted the most polished nation of Europe into a 
nation of fiends and furies, and the theatre of volup- 
tuous refinement into a stall of blood. The mighty 
mind, who governs the universe — whose being they 
had denied, whose word they had burnt, whose 
worship they had abolished, whose protection they 
denied, and whose wrath they defied — withdrew 
his protection, and gave them up; and with the 
ferocity of famished tigers, they fastened on each 
other's throats, and commenced the work of death; 
till quickly few were left alive to tell the tale of 
wo. And yet this dreadful experiment these men 
would repeat upon us. The entire corroborating 
action of the government of God, with all its 
satelHte institutions, they would abolish, to let out 
upon society, in wrath without mixture and 
without measure, the impatient depravity of man. 

The family — the foundation of the political edi- 
fice, the methodizer of the world's business, and 
the mainspring of its industry — they would demol- 
ish. The family — the sanctuary of the pure and 
warm aSections, where the helpless find protec- 
tion, — the wretched, sympathy,— and the wayward, 
undying affection, while parental hearts live to 
love, and pray, and forgive, — they would disband 



82 



PERILS OF ATHEISM* 



and desecrate. The family — that school of indel* 
ible early impression, and of unextinguished affec- 
tion — that verdant spot in life's dreary waste, about 
which memory lingers — that centre of attraction, 
which holds back the heady and high-minded, and 
whose cords bring out of the vortex the ship- 
wrecked mariner, after the last strand of every 
other cable is parted — these political Vandals 
would dismantle. The fire on its altars they would 
put out; the cold hand of death they would place 
on the warm beatings of its heart — to substitute 
the vagrancy of desire, the rage of lust, and the 
solitude, and disease, and desolation, which follow the 
footsteps of unregulated nature exhausted by excess. 

The possession of the soil in fee simple, which to 
industry is like the action of the sun to the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies, they would ex- 
change for the common field — where men perform 
their tasks, and receive their rations, and eat, 
and drink, and sleep, and die — while infancy is 
committed to the tender mercies of state nurse- 
ries in which, during the experiment, in France, 
about 9 out of 10 died — a system which, by infan- 
ticide and disease had in half a century reduced 
one half the population of the Sandwich Islands, 
and were it to be universal and permanent, would 
in a century nearly depopulate the earth. 

Thus would political atheism suspend the kind 
attractions of heaven upon us, and let out the 
storm of guilty passion, and by one disastrous 
wave, from stem to stern make a clear breach 
over us — sweeping us clear of what patriots, and 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



83 



Christians, and heaven have done to render us 
happy. 

It would unspirituaHze our souls, cut off eternity 
from our being, to hang its leaden weights upon 
the wheels of our machine, till it run down and 
stop forever. It would teach us to regard accoun- 
tability as a fiction, and right and wrong as obso- 
lete terms, without use or meaning — while with 
signal consistency it anathematized the ministry 
of Christ, eulogized the most abominable crimes, 
and covered the most exalted virtues with contempt 
and obloquy. 

The intire system is constructed for the accom- 
modation of the most disgusting licentiousness, and 
produces the most fearful paroxysm of infuriated 
depravity. It reduces man to be the insect of a 
day, and renders murder an event of no more 
magnitude than the killing of a fly. "What 
is it to kill a man?" said one of these athe- 
istic philosophers, while the work of death 
was going on, and the blood was flowing from 
the guillotine as from an inexhaustible fountain. 
"Only just to change the direction of a few oun- 
ces of blood;" and so, in the progress of the revo- 
lution which they contrived and let out upon the 
world, they changed, in about 5,000,000 of instan- 
ces, the direction of a few ounces of blood. 

But more than sufficient has been said to estab- 
lish the Vandal tendency of political atheism upon 
our republican institutions. If the iron govern- 
ments of Europe, justified by age, custom, power, 
and the sanctions of eternity perverted, to sustain 



84 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



them, could not stand, how shall we of yesterday 
escape, should the action of the same baleful cause 
be concentrated upon us? To us it would be like 
the falling of the dam, and the desolation of the 
unobstructed flood — like the extinction of the orb 
of day — like the suspension of gravity, and the 
reign of chaos. 

It is not so difficult, however, to convince you of 
the tendencies of political atheism^ as it is to 
awaken any suitable apprehension of any real dan- 
ger from the concentrated, indefatigable, and 
extended action of these men — the very enormity 
of the system tending to inspire incredulity. Bad 
indeed, you are prepared to say, is the system- 
blasphemous — detestable — but what can such men 
do — mere visionaries, fools, and madmen? No 
doubt this testimony is true. But if you possessed 
indubitable evidence of a conspiracy formed to 
burn the good city of Cincinnati, composed only of 
visionaries, fools, and madmen, would you seF 
your engines and disband your fire-companies 
and go to sleep because there were no honest 
and sober men among them? Who is better 
qualified than visionaries and madmen to scatter 
firebrands, arrows, and death? 

But surely the absurdity of the system must be 
its antidote. 

Alas! Does the history of the world prove that 
absurdity is an efficacious antidote to error? What 
absurdities can be conceived greater than men have 
swallowed in all ages? They are not deUcate about 
the dose, provided its lethean power puts conscience 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



85 



to sleep and reconciles impunity with crime. 

But the system can never prevail. It contains 
the elements of its own destruction. It would 
depopulate the world. I know it; but miUions 
in the meantime may perish, as milhons in France 
did perish in the making of the abortive experi- 
ment. The philosophists of France beheved and 
taught that the emptying of the earth of one 
entire generation would be a cheap price for the 
achievement of atheistic liberty; and they sac- 
rificed hecatombs, and at last discovered that athe- 
ism leads to despotism and not to liberty. 

But in our country these philosophers are, to 
be sure, weak, misguided, and visionary; yet they 
-are not ferocious, but mild, polite, well-meaning, 
honest men. And so, with few exceptions, they 
were in France, till blood began to flow — and 
then, like the tame lion who has tasted blood, 
they were furies; — while from morning till night, 
and from night to morning, the guillotine groabed 
with its labor, and wore off its edge in its bloody 
work. There is no ferocity which is equal to 
that which prevails where the madness of licen- 
tious liberty predominates, and the fear of God, 
and the protection of law fail, in the presence of 
an atheistic mob. 

But in this country it is not proposed to revo- 
lutionize by force, but by public sentiment, till it 
shall speak out at the polls. And so they pro- 
posed to do in France, and drew some honest 
men into their alhance. But when the crevice 
was opened it ran blood instead of water; and 
H 



86 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



though to open it were easy, to close it surpassed 
their power. 

But the people of this country are too en- 
lightened ever to hecome the dupes of such 
folly. 

No doubt of it, if they will consent to open 
their eyes upon the menacing evil, and to con- 
centrate upon it the withering power of public 
indignation and stern resistance. But who can 
say that an organized band, winding their dark 
way, and watching their opportunity in some event- 
ful crisis of national peril, may not, in evil power, 
fall on a moment when a spark upon the train 
may be irretrievable ruin? And who would trust 
good-natured, visionary incendiaries about the mag- 
azine? And who would sleep over such a mine? 

But their numbers are too small, and their in- 
fluence too contemptible to justify apprehension. 

' The number of vicious, unprincipled, and am- 
bitious, and desperate, and reckless men, of 
whose influence, through various bad affinities, 
they might avail themselves, is not small. And 
scepticism is now the epidemic of the world, as 
superstition was in the dark ages; and if under 
the favour of the one, Peter the hermit stirred 
up a crusade for the cross, it ought to be remem- 
bered, that under the other epidemic, Voltaire, 
with equal calamity and power, stirred up a cru- 
sade against it. 

A republic whose constituents are intelligence 
and virtue, afford the most perfect condition of 
human society; but it is the most delicate, and 



PERILS OF ATHEISM* 



8^ 



complex, and perilous in its construction, and dif- 
ficult of preservation, and facile of destruction; 
and when it falls, there is no chaos so dark and 
dreadful as the anarchy which follows. Well 
might the angel sent down to announce the plagues 
of revolution, cry with a loud voice thrice reit- 
erated, "Wo, wo, wo to the inhabitants of the 
earth!" Of all the materials which God has made, 
mind, no doubt, is the most powerful; and in its 
disordered state, the most ungovernable and ter- 
rible — for though in great masses, and under mild 
and efficient supervision, like the mirror surface 
of the ocean in a calm, it reflects back upon the 
heavens the images of its beauty, in a moment, 
should these safe-guards fail, the breath of some 
pestilent wind may rave over it, and wreck the 
treasures which are freighted on its bosom. The 
cloud, as a man's hand, then, ought to be watched, 
and every individual with dark lantern wend- 
ing his secret way to the magazine, should be 
stopped and interrogated. 

It is not, then, by a numerical majority at the 
polls only, that this atheistic conspiracy may de- 
stroy us. They may create a pestilent atmos- 
phere, and send out moral contagion, and blow 
blasting and mildew from between their shriveled 
lips. They may poison the fountains, and fever the 
heart, and madden the brain of the nation. 
They may suspend on the mass of minds those 
moral attractions of heaven, without which society 
will dissolve as organic matter would, should the 
attraction of gravity and cohesion cease. Let the 



88 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



belief and feeling of accountability fail from the 
public mind, and poverty, and envy, and ambi- 
tion, and lust, be summoned to a crusade against 
religion, and purity, and property, and law, and 
how long would the police of our cities protect us? 
How soon would the laws of the land be cob- 
webs, and crime roll over us its wave of deso- 
lation, as once the waters of the flood swept 
over the earth! 

I am not an alarmist, to proclaim danger when 
there is none, nor a false prophet to conceal it 
when it approaches. 1 trust that my country will 
live and rise to a glorious immortahty. But if 
she should fall on evil times, and be ruined — 
while the fires of her burning ascend, and the 
fragments of her wreck are passing by, and the 
chains of her sens going to captivity are riveting, 
I intend to be able to retain the consolation of 
Hector amid the ruins of burning Troy: 

''Si Pergama dextra 
Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.'^' 

The relations of the divine government to repub- 
lican institutions — the absolute necessity of an all- 
pervading moral influence, and the certain direfiil 
consequences of an exclusively prevalent leaven of 
infidelity, are, I am persuaded, but imperfectly, 
and to a very limited extent, understood. It is 
my purpose to give the subject a thorough discus- 
sion, as associated with the open avowed purpose 
of a class of men, to set aside utterly the govern- 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 89 

ment of God, and the existence of marriage, of 
separate property, and the influence of all our 
political institutions. 

Let the adaptation of the means to the end be well 
considered. Tracts, and lectures, and paragraphs, 
and treatises, addressed to all the principles of human 
discontent and insubordination, which have ren- 
dered it difficult to protect hfe and property, and 
maintain the peace and order of society. Recog- 
nising their misery — sympathising with them in their 
wrongs, and inflaming by argument and by ridicule 
their envy, and pride, and rage. Tracts filled with 
specious cavils, and popular sophistry, and under- 
mining scepticism, eradicating conscience and prin- 
ciple, and inspiring ridicule and blasphemy, and 
the most unlimited licentiousness, directed especi- 
ally to the uninformed, and unevangelized portion 
of our population in city and country, on the farm 
and in the work-shop and manufactory. Swarming, 
like the frogs of Egypt, from the centre to the 
circumference of our land. Designed and emi- 
nently calculated to divide society against itself, 
by fostering invidious distinctions between the 
laboring and intellectual classes, and the rela- 
tively poor and the rich — exhibiting industry, and 
separate property, and virtue, as offences against 
society, and poverty and vice as the result only 
of religion, and laws, and persecution, till the 
physical power, misdirected and infuriated, shall 
turn that impatient energy against the institutions 
of liberty, which in Europe was turned against 
the feudal system, and thrones, and despotism, 



90 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



Let not the result of these means and of false 
security be forgotten, in overturning one of the 
strongest governments in Europe, with fewer means 
and greater hindrances than attend their experi- 
ment here. 

When Voltaire boasted that he was tired of 
hearing it said that twelve men overturned idola- 
try and established the Christian religion, and that 
he would prove that one man was sufficient to 
expel it from the world, he knew that his infidel 
clubs were organized and concocting the poison 
which books, and tracts, and plays, and every 
species of publication, were circulating through 
every artery and vein of a great empire. He 
saw the leaven fermenting — the fever rising — and 
the unquiet earth heaving. But while the maga- 
zines of wo were filling, the nation slept. While 
the storm was coming on, those who raised it 
were despised. "What can they do?" said the 
king, in the majesty of his power. "What can 
they do?" said the nobihty which guarded the 
throne. " Chimerical, contemptible, what can they 
do"^' said the bishops, "against us, who hold the 
conscience of the nation by the power of habit 
and the terrors of eternity?" To them it was 
no more alarming than the mild cloud of even- 
ing. But soon it blackened the heavens, and 
poured down desolation. The mining to the 
ear of false confidence was as the ticking of a 
clock beneath the surfac'e, till in a moment it 
became the voice of mighty thunderings. The 
same results from the same causes had come to 



jferils of atheism. 



91 



pass in England, had not the sagacious Pitt, 
warned by the fate of his neighbors, consented 
to take counsel of his fears, and prepare a resist- 
ing power, and to his foresight and firmness, the 
civilized world owes its exemption from the over- 
whelming scourge of atheistic revolution. 

3. There is no trait in the character of man 
more surprising than his infatuated insensibility 
to the danger of moral causes. 

With the natural world we can make him 
acquainted, and lead him to foresee the evil, and 
hide himself; while, upon the moral world, he 
opens his vacant eye, from generation to genera- 
tion, uninstructed and unwarned. Its laws are as 
obvious, its causes of evil as deadly and as uni- 
form in individuals, families, cities and nations; and 
still while the host of evil is mustering, and aug- 
menting, and moving on to their work of ruin, 
he cries peace, and ridicules those who talk of 
danger. All nations have been let down from 
the high tone of early vigor and correct princi- 
ple, by the outcry against bigotry, and severity, 
and needless scrupulosity; and by good natured, 
simpering, liberal, careless, fool-hardy security in 
going down stream. It was thus the Epicurean 
philosophy unharnessed the loins and quenched the 
courage, and divided the counsels of patriotic Greece. 
The same infection extended to Rome, and touched 
with death the iron sinews and proud heart of 
that vast empire. Among the Jews it was saying 
to the seers, see not, and to the prophets, pro- 
phesy not unto us right things, prophesy smoothe 



92 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



things — prophesy deceits — which prepared the way 
for that unparalleled moral corruption which 
ended in the destruction of their city, and the 
dispersion of their nation. 

The same process as the natural result of age, 
and wealth, and voluptuousness, has begun among 
ourselves. 

The energetic virtue of our Puritan ancestry, 
while we refuse not the blessings it has sent down 
to us, and which, with a less elastic tone had 
never reached us, we are beginning to make the 
subject of apology and the butt of ridicule. From 
generation to generation the threadbare story is 
going down, they were too strict — while every 
son who, in religion and moral rectitude, resem- 
bles his Puritan sire, is made the subject of chari- 
table outcry and patriotic suspicion, that he is 
plotting against the liberties of his country. 

Now what have these banded Goths and Van- 
dals to do but to sing our own songs over their 
cups, and repeat our own stale jests, and join us 
in unharnessing the nation from virtuous restraint, 
by loading with ridicule, suspicion, and obloquy, 
those who know that righteousness exalteth a 
nation, while sin is the reproach of any people. 
If a foreign army of half a million should in- 
vade us, the danger would be small, • for the effort 
would correspond with the exigency. But when 
an order of men are systematically mustering and 
marshalling, and applying those moral causes 
which, in all ages, have been more potent in the 
dissolution of nations than fleets and armies, — 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



93 



how is it that those who fear their power are 
deemed enthusiasts, and charged with the designs 
they would avert, while smiling, thoughtless, 
reckless, good natured men, who cry peace, are 
regarded as the overflowings of charity and wis- 
dom? But it is a charity which in all ages has 
dug the grave of liberty, and a wisdom which 
has buried deep the best interests of man. 

If we look at the power of small organized 
bodies acting systematically and perseveringly upon 
improvident and unorganized masses, we may learn 
not to despise this atheistic fraternity. 

The alertness and perseverance which charac- 
terize minorities in evil, is as proverbial as the 
phlegmatic indolence and security of majorities on 
the side of virtue and order — commonly the one 
gains and the other loses, till the majority chan- 
ges sides. In all republics, also, the gravitating 
tendencies of evil unaided are powerful. All dema- 
gogues flatter the vices of the community, and all 
who practice licentiousness, and live by its pat- 
ronage, are open-mouthed for liberty, and infuri- 
ated against bigots. What, then, have these men 
to do but to row downward with, the tide? 

In every political movement also, the unprincipled 
have the advantage over the principled and sober, 
in their unlimited variety of means. These con- 
siderations, without organized treason, tolerated 
by our abounding charity, made the fathers of 
the revolution tremble before the constitution was 
formed, whose administration, though auspicious 
has not allayed the apprehensions of our wisest 



94 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



and best men. Is it not an infatuated security, 
then, which refuses to fear, and cries peace, when 
an organized association of men, wise to do evil, 
and aided by the immemorial downward tenden- 
cies of human nature, are directing their most 
powerful assaults on our most vulnerable and un- 
protected points. 

Consider, also, with how much greater ease so- 
ciety may be undermined and destroyed, than or- 
ganized and built up. 

Slowly and reluctantly does human nature rise 
from ignorance, and sloth, and animalism — and 
many hands, and constant effort is required to 
raise and hold up the sluggish mass, while a single 
hand may suffice to cut the cord, and let it thun- 
der back upon destruction. A well tuned orches- 
tra, and a harmonious choir, demand science and 
skill, while a fool can put the instruments out of 
tune and send out notes of discord. To raise 
the garden to its highest state of culture, taste 
and beauty combine the experience of genera- 
tions. But a herd of swine may root it all up 
in a day. 

It must not be forgotten, neither, in this com- 
parison of forces, that for the destruction of our 
institutions, the bad passions only of our nature 
are needed in a field where the seed are thick 
sown spontaneously, and the vegetation is rapid, 
and rank, and the harvest abundant, and without 
culture. No bibles are needed, nor sanctuaries^ 
nor laws, nor courts, nor sabbaths, nor ministers 
of evil to prevent the extinction, and secure the 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



95 



continuance of selfishness, and pride, and envy, 
and covetousness, and ambition, and fraud, and 
sloth, and inebriation, and revenge, while all 
possible influence of revelation, and law, and 
schools, and families and religious institutions 
can scarcely keep down the intrusive weeds, and 
give space and nutrition to the plants of virtue. — 
What a compact, then, is that in which the enemies 
of our republican institutions have only to aid the 
vices which flourish spontaneously, and strangle the 
sickly exotics, which our utmost care can scarcely 
keep alive. 



LECTURE V. 

THE 

PERILS OF ATHEISM 

TO 

THE NATIONe 



2 PETER, HI. 3, 4. 

KNOWING THIS FIRST, THAT THERE SHALL COME IN THE LAST DAYS 
SCOFFERS, WALKING AFTER THEIR OWN LUSTS, AND SAYING, WHERE 
IS THE PROxMISE OF HIS COMING? FOR SINCE THE FATHERS FELL 
■ ASLEEP, ALL THINGS CONTINUE AS THEY WERE FROM THE BEGIN- 
NING OF THE CREATION. 

The persons described in this passage, denied 
the providence of God, as the administration of 
a moral government, by rewards and punishments, 
and asserted the indiscriminating empire of the 
laws of nature. From the uniformity of his pro- 
vidential government, they inferred that no intel- 
ligent mordi governmeijl existed. They were 
scoffers at God and religion, walking after their 
own lusts. They are a particular development 

of wickedness in the last time — the gospel dis- 

I 97 



98 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



pensation. Their appearance commenced early, 
and in modern days has come out in ample deso- 
lation. 

We have given some account of this class of 
men in modern Europe, and have entered upon 
the consideration of their efforts in this country. 

It is proposed in this lecture, to illustrate in 
continuation, the perils of the entire system of 
scepticism, organized and unorganized, which goes 
to suspend the action of the government of God, 
and the influence of Christianity upon this na- 
tion; and 

1. The extent of our country renders the effi- 
cient supervision of our laws impossible, without 
a vigorous all-pervading tone of intelligence and 
moral principle. Our interests are, in fact, one; 
hut our vision is limited, and our information im- 
perfect, and our selfishness, and pride, and pas- 
sion are greait, and impatient of self-denial, and 
contradiction; and misinformation, and jealousy, 
and local prejudice are of spontaneous growth, 
and, with the sinister culture of reckless ambi- 
tion, of rampant vegetation. 

When, therefore, we consider the vigor of our 
national intellect — the freedom of our habits — the 
self-will and self-sufficiency of our republican 
character — our boundless enterprise, our corrupt- 
ing abundance, and voluptuous dissipation, and 
fractious impatience of rebuke or control — is this 
a nation, so fearfully and wonderfully made, 
and so eminently fitted for self-destruction, to say 
unto God, " depart from us, for we desire not 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



99 



the knowledge of thy ways?" and to Christ, "let 
us alone, thou Jesus of Nazareth, for what have 
we to do with thee?" 

Our danger is greatly augmented if we consider, 
moreover, that beside the collisions of individuals, 
with law and order, some of our most perilous 
movements are the conflicts of independent states — 
of mighty nations, condensed for particular pur- 
poses into one nation, by the individual suffrage of 
the entire people; and that often one half the 
nation is roused in furious political strife, to coun- 
teract the desires of the other half. 

Now, what motives of human origin and appli- 
cation can extend their all-pervading and efficient 
control over such a mass of mind, so diversified 
by circumstances, and so delicately, and com- 
plexly, and slenderly aUied, and so infuriated 
often by passion, pride, and discontent? 

Who but God can speak efficaciously to the 
waves of such an unquiet sea? What but the 
omnipotent attractions of his glory, and the sanc- 
tions of his eternal government, and the tran- 
quilhzing influence of his gospel upon renovated 
mind, can bring and hold such discordant and 
powerful materials in prosperous social aUiance? 
These atheists might as well form a project to 
annihilate the • sun, and hold the material uni- 
verse together by cobwebs instead of his attrac- 
tions, as to withdraw from masses of depraved 
mind the moral influence of his government and the 
institutions of Christianity. 

It was with the utmost difficulty that our union 



100 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



was formed. Nothing but an urgent necessity^ 
and wisdom, and prudence, and patience, and con- 
flescension, arid" ^:6nfidence in God^ and his pro- 
tection and blessing, saved us. When o^r num- 
bers were small, our extent limited, our capital, 
and credit, and enterprise in embryo; and at an 
age of relative purity of morals, and before the 
agitations of party spirit assumed their fiery as- 
pect, and terrific power, the patriots whom na- 
ture and the revolution had made great, and in- 
vested with unlimited influence, found it extremely 
difiicult to achieve the compromise that made us 
one. And when it was done, it was with trem- 
bling that the patriot navigators, with Washing- 
ton at the helm, launched forth upon the untried 
deep; and though, as yet, we have not foundered, 
not one of the patriot band have died in full 
and certain hope. Nor is the danger past. Dark 
clouds environ our horizon now, and rocks and 
quicksands are about our way. Our ablest cap- 
tains, who in ordinary times conceal their fears, 
open their eyes and tell us that there are breakers, 
and a stiff wind, and a lee shore, and that they 
cannot be answerable for the safety of the ship. 
That she will weather the storm they hope, but 
fear that in evil hour she may strike or founder. 
The concussions of party spirit now, are not the 
healthful conflicts of jealous liberty, but the par- 
oxysms of envy, and desperate ambition, and deadly 
hate — not the breath of zephyrs, and the gentle 
lundulations of the lake, to prevent stagnation; 
but the perilous commotion of powerful elements* 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



101 



What, then, in such a crisis, might not be anti- 
cipated, should a band of these political experi- 
menters get on board, and gain the helm, on 
purpose to wreck the ship, to re-construct from 
its fragments another of b.etter model, and to be 
navigated under better auspices, — to throw over- 
board compass, quadrant, and chart, and put out the 
sun to steer by conjecture and the stars? What 
if they are chimerical, and honest? How many 
misguided men aboard does it require to wreck 
a ship in a storm? 

The unexampled power and prosperity of our 
nation, does but amplify, and hasten, and render 
more inevitable the causes of our ruin, without 
the corresponding moral influence of the govern- 
ment of God. 

Steam has, indeed, annihilated time and dis- 
tance, and canals and rail roads have exalted the 
valleys, and brought down the mountains; and 
mechanism, by its abbreviations of labor, is re- 
laxing the curse on beast and man, and multiply- 
ing a hundred fold the products of human labor. 

But if other republics, on their little territo- 
ries, and in their dilatory course, accumulated the 
means of effeminacy and ruin in a few genera- 
tions, how swiftly must our sun roll up to its 
meridian, to set among the clouds generated by 
the decomposition of our rank abundance! 

Nor let us confide presumptuously in the suf- 
ficiency of a national education. For though 
ignorsmce may destroy us, knowledge alone 

cannot save. Knowledge is, indeed, power; but 

i2 



102 



FERILS OF ATHEISM. 



it is power to kill as well as to make alive, as 
it is wielded by the madness of the heart, or 
by moral principle. The men who terrified the 
world by their crimes, did not lack mental cul- 
ture. 

; It is the heart which governs the intellect, and 
not the intellect which governs the heart; and it 
is by the education of the national heart, in the 
first principles of the government of God, and 
the guidance of the national will, by the hopes 
and fears of eternity, added to the sanctions of 
time, that we can undergird the ship, and secure 
to her a safe passage and quiet moorings. 

3. The very greatness of our liberty is its most 
terrific attribute, in the presence of organized 
licentiousness and demoralization. 

In a despotic government, force may protect us, 
where public sentiment is too corrupt to secure the 
execution of the laws. But in a repubhc it is not so. 
There, when pubhc sentiment falters, the laws 
have no power; and then, first anarchy, and next 
despotism ensues. The genius of our government, 
and the competitions of party have introduced 
universal suffrage. The door is wide open to all 
who are born, and to all who immigrate, and 
cannot be shut. We must live by universal suf- 
frage or perish. If we can imbue with knowl- 
edge and virtue the mass, we shall live; but if 
irreUgion and profligacy predominate, sure as the 
march of time, we fail. Such mobs among us, as 
in England they play with as the lion would 
play with the. kid, would destroy us. Force enough 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



103 



to quell them, would, in the hand of an ambitious 
demagogue, be force enough to enslave us. Ours 
must be a self-government or despotism. Such a 
nation as this must be greatly free, or crushed 
by the most rigorous despotism that ever extorted 
groans from suffering humanity. Do any exult 
in our safety, and bid defiance to disaster, be- 
cause we are now so free, and so powerful? — - 
The inconstant ocean might as well exult in 
her momentary tranquillity, because her waves 
are above control; when it is the very circum- 
stance of their freedom and indomitable power 
which gives to the , atmosphere such power upon 
the fluid mass. 

Twice, in France, the physical power has gained 
the ascendency over law; and by the last vic- 
tory, the discovery has been made, that to patri- 
ots, cities are fortresses, and pavements munitionsi, 
This is one of the most glorious and dread- 
ful discoveries of modern, days — glorious in its 
ultimate results, in the emancipation of the world, 
but dreadful in those intervening revolutions which 
power may achieve in the conquest of liberty^ 
without corresponding intelligence and virtue for 
its permanent preservation. 

The conquest of hberty is not difficult — the 
question is, where to put it— with whom to entrust 
it. If to the multitude who achieved it, it be 
committed, it will perish by anarchy. If national 
guards are employed for its defence, the bayo- 
nets which protect it are at any moment able 
to destroy it for a militarj^ despotism. If to a 



104 



PERILS OF ATHEISM* 



republican king it be entrusted, it will have to 
be regulated by state policy, and fed on bread 
and water, until the action of her heart, and the 
movement of her tongue, and the power of her 
arm, as under the deadly incubus, shall cease* 
There is not in this wide world a safe deposit 

FOR liberty, but THE HEARTS OF PATRIOTS, SO EN- 
LIGHTENED, AS TO BE ABLE TO JUDGE OF CORRECT 
LEGISLATION, AND SO PATIENT AND DISINTERESTED, AS 
TO PRACTICE SELF-DENIAL, AND SELF-GOVERNMENT, FOR 
THE PUBLIC GOOD. 

But can such a state of society be found and 
maintained without the bible, and the institutions 
of Christianity? Did a condition of unperverted 
liberty, uninspired by Christianity, ever bless the 
world through any considerable period of dura- 
tion? The power of a favoring clime, and the 
force of genius, did thrust up from the dead level 
of monotonous despotism, the republics of Greece 
to a temporary Uberty; but it was a patent model 
only, compared with such a nation as this; and 
it was partial, and capricious, and of short dura- 
tion, arjd rendered illustrious rather by the darkness 
which preceded and followed, than by the benign 
influence of its own beams. 

Certainly it is Christianity which, in this coun- 
try, rocked the cradle of our liberties, defended 
our youth, and brought us up to manhood. And 
it has been proved that under her auspices three 
millions and twelve millions of people may be 
protected and governed. But that twenty, fifty, 
or a hundred millions can, without a vast aug- 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



105 



mentation of her moral power over mind, has 
not been proved — while all past analogies, and all 
present circumstances of our nation announce that 
Christianity is our best hope, and that without it 
our destruction does not slumber. 

During all past ages, the vast majority of the 
human family, unblest by revelation, have been 
idolaters and slaves; and at the present time, all 
nations upon whom the sun of righteousness has 
not arisen, are in deep darkness, and are crushed 
by a grievous despotism. Daylight is not more 
uniformly found in the track of the sun, than civil 
liberty is found in the track of Christianity, and 
despotism in its absence. 

The problem then to be settled by this young 
but mighty nation, is this — can a sufficient intel- 
lectual illumination be combined with a sufficient 
power of moral purity, to create and perpetuate 
a predominant and efficacious public sentiment in 
favor of a correct morality, and efficieat law for 
the protection of virtue, and the punishment of 
crime? If this can be achieved, the nation will 
be the safe depository of liberty for ever. The 
heart of this mighty people will be its abiding 
sanctuary, and the arm of this nation, uncorrupt 
and undebased, will, under God, be its everlast- 
ing protection; and we shall be the greatest, hap- 
piest nation that ever lived. Violence shall not 
be heard in our land, nor wasting and destruc- 
tion within our borders. Our walls will be sal- 
vation, and our gates will be praise. Our sun will 
not go down, nor our moon wane. The Lord 



i 



106 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



will be our unsetting sun, and our God will be 
our glory. 

We shall not appreciate the danger of an or- 
ganized effort against our civil and religious institu^ 
tions, without considering the various bad affinities of 
our depraved nature, upon which they may easily 
act, and bring them into unconscious subserviency 
to their purpose. 

It cannot be denied that human nature lusteth 
to envy. No passions in man are more powerful 
than selfishness, and pride, and inordinate desire 
and discontent. These were the origin of the 
contest between the patricians and plebeians in 
Rome, which continually agitated, and at length 
destroyed the republic. It is a distinction in 
society inseparable from the diverse capacities, 
characters, habits, and employments of men in 
the different departments of labor, which are in- 
dispensable to the most elevated possible condi- 
tion of society. It exists in every republic, and 
no doubt it is a constitution of things inseparable 
from the intelligent perfect society of the uni- 
verse. 

But it is a constitution of providence against 
which rebelhon has rolled its most furious tide; 
and especially, as the inequahty of conditions is 
aggravated by crime among uninformed masses, 
goaded by suffering, and reckless of principle, it 
constitutes a most malignant and terrific physi- 
cal power, looking up with green eyed envy upon 
all the happy fruits of virtue, and knowledge ^ 
and industry in the orders of society above. 



PERILS OP ATHEISM. 



107 



None who have not moved through this moral 
atmosphere, and watched the eye, and noted the 
significant tones of complaint, and movements of 
subdued but bitter feeHng, can conceive what a 
magazine lies under the foundations of all which 
is valuable to man. 

This jealousy of the higher orders of society 
is especially powerful against the rich — it is almost 
Hke the ceaseless burning of heated iron. There is 
pervading the entire class of relative poverty a strong 
feeling of dissatisfaction, as if they were injured, 
and as if the rich were the aggressors, and were 
revelling on the spoils which had been wrested 
from them. 

The various forms of dishonesty, and pecula- 
tion, and fraud, and violence, are but so many 
symptomatic indications of the impatient violence 
which, but for the strong arm of the law, would 
break out in one levelling prostration of all which 
art, and industry and science have reared up. 

With the constant admonition, that this state of 
feeling is wrong — that inequality of condition is 
inseparable from the best possible constitution of 
society — that its miseries are adventitious, from 
the perversion of heaven's wisdom and goodness, 
yet without intellectual perversion — with the under- 
standing and conscience armed against such feel- 
ings — with the omniscient eye of God on the 
heart, and his voice reiterating, be still, and know 
that I am God — with his sword drawn, and his 
lightnings at hand, and his thunderings uttering 
their voices, and all the retributions of time 



108 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



and eternity impending, it is as much as can be 
done to prevent explosion, and revolution, and 
more than is done to protect life, and liberty, and 
property. 

The constancy of peculation in trade — the inge- 
nuity of swindlers, and pick-pockets| — the dexterity 
of theft — the violence of robbery, and the increas- 
ing recklessness of murder, show what, as the 
government of God falls back, is rising up and 
rushing in upon us — -show that the mountain is 
unquiet, and that these doctrines of atheistic level- 
ing liberty, are like so many sparks falling upon 
a train already prepared for an explosion, and 
waiting only for the moment of ignition. 

Who that has to deal with property, and ' 
those who covet, does not know the strong 
fever which burns beneath the restraints of 
law? How much woiild any' man well versed 
in the ways of 'men, give for his outstanding 
debts, of which he could produce no evidence, or 
which the laws sustained by executive power could' 
riot collect? The relations of civilized society, 
and separate property, could not exist an hour 
after public sentiment, and the physical power had* 
ceased to sustain the laws. 

Let this pestilent philosophy, then, augment the 
moral obhquity of the lower classes of society, by ad- 
ding the sahction of principle to their perverted, 
irhpatient, alifenated feelin^i Let private property' 
and inequality of condition be stigmatized as an artifi- 
cial condition, — the work of priests and lawyers — 
of church and state — a vile civil and ecclesiastical 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 109 

aristocracy. Let the laws be traduced as systems of 
organized injustice and vile persecution; and the 
soothing accents of sympathy and hope be breathed 
upon the ear of suffering humanity by these dear 
lovers of the people. Let them inculcate on every 
heart the people's wrongs^ and their own mag- 
nanimous sympathy. Let their voice be heard 
without — at the corners of the streets — at the chief 
places of concourse — at the opening of the gates, 
and in all the places of strong drink and inebria- 
tion, and sinks of pollution, and infamy, and 
wo — ascribing their sufferings to priestcraft, and 
property, and marriage, and virtue, and law. 
Let them flatter the multitude for virtues which 
they do not possess, and eulogize as virtues 
their rank crimes — putting light for darkness, 
and darkness for light. Let them praise one 
another, and denounce all whose concord with 
them does not promise aid to their project. Let 
them bargain their suffrage to ambitious dema- 
gogues, who care not by what ladder they rise 
or what is demoUshed, provided they ascend — 
upon condition that one good turn shall be re- 
paid by another — until by collusion, and the con- 
centration of evil forces, they gain the bal- 
ance in some closely contested election, with a 
sufficient mass of corrupt propensity, and evil 
daring, and infatuated madness, to seize the mo- 
ment to let out their experiment. Then, indeed, 
it will be but for a moment. But that moment 
will be the downfall of liberty, and the overturn- 

K 



110 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



ings of revolution, and the infuriated pouring out 
of blood. It will be but a moment, and the indig- 
nation will have passed over; but like the inunda- 
tion, it will find a paradise, and leave behind it an 
utter desolation. 

If you think that such a crisis cannot come 
on our country, you have not studied the 
constitution of society, the character of man, the 
past history of moral causes, or the existing signs 
of the times. You have not read the glowing 
pages of specious argument, of powerful eloquence, 
of spirit-stirring indignation — pouring adventitious 
action upon the fever of the brain, and the mad- 
ness of the heart. 

Hear these Catilines harangue their troops, in 
the 500,000 grogshops of the nation — the tem- 
ples and inspiration of atheistic worship: — ^^"Com 
rades, patriots, friends, — The time has come. Long 
have you suffered, and deeply, and in all sorts of 
ways. Property has been denied you, that others 
might roll in splendor; and toil imposed, that they 
might inherit ease; and poverty inflicted, that they 
might be blessed with more than heart could wish; 
and to add ignominy to fraud, and persecution to 
insult, your names are cast out as evil. You snatch 
the crumbs from their table, and they call it steal- 
ing. The momentary alleviation of your woes by 
stimulus, drunkenness; and your intercourse as 
freeborn animals, is branded with outlawry and 
burning shame ; and all this by that intolerant aris- 
tocracy of wealth, religion and law. You are 
miserable, and you are oppressed; but you hold 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



Hi 



iri your own hand the power of redress. Those 
splendid dwellings, and glittering equipages — those 
cultivated farms and cattle on a thousand hills — • 
those harns, bursting out with all manner of plenty 
— those voluptuous cities, and stores, crowded with 
merchandize — and boats and ships, transporting 
wealth — and those banks and vaults of gold are 
yours. You are the people — numbers are with 
you — ^votes are with you. Rise, freemen — rise — 
to the polls — to the polls — and all is yours." 

It is true this leveling system would destroy 
the industry of the world. It would augment the 
number, and aggravate the poverty of the poor, 
as it would expel the arts, banish commerce, stop 
the plough, and shut up the work-shop, and send 
back the ruined race to skins, and bows and 
arrows. But what is all this to a short-sighted, 
infuriated population, who know only that they 
are miserable, and feel that all above them is invidi- 
ous distinction and crime; and that to rise, it is 
only necessary to grasp the pillars of society, 
and pull it down? Is there no treason in breath- 
ing such doctrines upon the ear of discontented 
millions? It is throwing firebrands into a maga- 
zine. 

The numbers to whom these men and their 
doctrines have access, are not duly considered by 
those who think that there is no danger. To 
the uninformed population of our cities, and me- 
chanical and manufacturing establishments, as well as 
to our sparse frontier settlements, they pay a sedulous 
attention, teaching inebriation, and lust, and im- 



112 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



piety, by caricature and the eye, as well as by 
the ear. 

To all the vicious, incensed by the outlawry 
of public sentiment, they send the tokens of their 
sympathy, the manuals of their instruction, and 
the trumpet-call to action, with unfaltering confi- 
dence of their aid. 

Upon all the wretched young men, whom pleas- 
ure has seduced from the right way, and stung 
to madness and desperation by loss of character 
and blighted hopes, such as Catiline drew after 
him to overthrow the liberties of Rome, they may 
calculate, without danger of deception. 

While the covetous, who live, by the vices of the 
community, and fear that we are going too fast, 
without intending the extremities which come, 
may aid to bring them on beyond retrieve. 

Nominal believers, from great aversion to the 
accountabilities of an endless government, and 
punishment, may, from repulsion on the one 
hand, and sympathetic attractions on the other, 
be made more than neutral, while the forces are 
collecting, and the conflict is coming on. 

And all who regard the bible as a dangerous 
book for popular use, might aid the common effort 
of restricting its circulation, and putting down 
rival denominations — intending only their own ben- 
efit, but unable as the crisis rolled on, to stop 
the overpowering evil. 

The direct and indirect influence, then, of this poi- 
sonous leaven, industriously propagated, and favored 
by human nature, and the multiphed coinciden- 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



113 



ces of character, interest, and circumstance, can 
not be small, or be safely despised. 

But if to this onward movement of concen- 
trated power, you add the systematic effort 
which is making to break down the moral resis- 
tances of the community, and to open an unob- 
structed admission to the flood, our solicitude may 
well increase. 

The natural course of business and pleasure, in 
its bearings upon the sabbath, is sufficiently ap- 
palling. This day is, no doubt, the great organ 
of the divine administration. It is of little conse- 
quence whether men disbelieve the existence of 
God, or forget his character and laws, and authority. 
But separate from the sabbath and social worship, 
no efficacious means exist for the religious instruction 
of mankind ; and the cessation of the sabbath is the 
abolition of the government of God as really as 
could be effected by the disbelief of his being. 

But this dreadful work of obliteration, unplan- 
ned and undesigned, is going on as fast almost 
as atheism could desire. The stream of commerce 
on our seacoast is now swelled by the streams 
of dissipation which pour out from our cities, as 
from inexhaustible fountains, and by the streams 
of business, private and national, which hold on 
their unchecked and augmenting career — while our 
inland seas, and canals, and our stages, and the 
steam-boats, and the rail-roads^ in all directions, 
seem to vie with each other in their all-perva- 
ding and lengthened career of sabbath day vio- 
lation. Alas! the whole nation seems to be on 

k2 



114 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



the sabbath in a state of migration, and never 
m one stay — the sanctuary empty, and every 
stage, and boat, and tavern full. Who can arrest 
and instruct this mass of vagrant migrating mind 
—and who train up the children of the na- 
tion, abandoned to ignorance and irreligion? Could 
the nation be intellectually educated, were all 
its instructers, and all its pupils driving about on 
wheels and boats, in hours consecrated to study? 
And can the nation be instructed in the gov- 
ernment of God, and its own relative duties and 
responsibilities, by the way side, or on the canal, 
or the lake — running unceasingly the race of 
business and pleasure? Assuredly this mighty na- 
tion cannot be compelled by law to stop and 
consecrate the sabbath to the great and benev- 
olent ends of its institution. But it is equally 
certain, that if it will not voluntarily pause, and 
do homage to the wisdom and benevolence of 
God, by a spontaneous rest for purposes of religious 
education, and moral culture, the nation is undone. 
Europe never will be qualified for liberty until she 
keeps her sabbaths in a better manner; and this 
happy nation will not long possess any thing to 
be envied above the kingdoms of Europe, after 
the influence of her sabbaths has passed away. 

But as if the fates did not turn the spindle fast 
enough which unrolls our destiny, and lets us down, 
these conspirators, aided inconsiderately by mul- 
titudes, who know not their purpose, are turning a 
systematic jealousy upon the sabbath and its friends. 
The observance of it, by our fathers and our- 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



115 



Selves, in the only way in which its great designs 
can be answered, is ridiculed; our solicitude for 
its preservation stigmatized as sainted hypocrisy; 
our meek supplications and reasonings against its 
legalized violation, adduced as pregnant evidence 
of conspiracy against our country's liberty. 

Great efforts are made also to inspire with jeal- 
ousy, and to play off against one another, the 
great christian denominations of our land — to ren- 
der our resistance impotent, and the very name 
of christian odious. 

While they were few and feeble, they were 
despised; but their multiplication has inspired alarm, 
and no hope remains but to divide and conquer. 
Infidels behold with terror the great denominations 
assimilating in evangelical feeling and effort; and 
they know that the consummation of confidence 
and love among us would be death to their hopes. 
But apprised — too well apprised of the infir- 
mities of good men, and how open their ears are 
to suspicion — how much faster false accusation 
flies than detection follows; and that lies repeated 
produce on millions the odium which might justly 
attach to the reaUty, they cease not from their 
whisperings and false accusations. They are aware 
how envy opens the ear to detraction, and guards 
it against the evidence of integrity, by listless 
inattention, or a jealous scrutiny. They ap- 
preciate fully the credulity of men, and the 
power of a terrified imagination; which, the 
more it looks into darkness, and the less it can 
see, the more it believes that it swarms with gor- 



116 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



gons, hydras, and chimeras dire. They know how 
tenacious we all are of civil and religious libertyj 
and that nothing would sooner cover a denomi- 
nation with infamy than to attempt its own 
aggrandizement on the ruin of other denom- 
inations. And with these elements in view, 
they seem to have surveyed their ground, and 
staked their cause on the prospect of sowing 
discord among brethren, by rumors and false accu- 
sation. 

Their plan is evidently to play off their artil- 
lery first upon one denomination, flattering the 
rest, till the first may be humbled; the next most 
feared and hated is to take its turn, and be bat- 
tered down — giving to the most tame-spirited and 
abject, the privilege of being eaten up the last. 

A furious infidel demagogue, not long since, was 
pouring out his heated invective against the pres- 
byterians. A gentleman present said to him, — 
" why do you single out the presby terians ? Other 
denominations preach the same doctrines, and have 
revivals, and propagate the bible, tracts, and mis- 
sions." The answer was, " one at a time. We 
will dispose of the rest when we have taken 
care of you." 

The union of church and state by one, or by 
all denominations, is the most foolish, baseless cal- 
umny which was ever uttered. There never was 
an enterprise more opposed to all the feelings of 
all the citizens of the United States, nurtured 
from their infancy in tlie principles of liberty, 
and no project could be conceived more abso- 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



117 



lately impossible, or which would concentrate such 
an overwhelming tide of public sentiment against 
it. There is, however, one union of church and 
state which is possible, and to which the eyes 
of the community may well be directed. It is 
the offered alliance of political men in power, 
with one or another rival denomination, sought 
for purposes of ambition, or by a tottering 
administration, to sustain its brief authority, or to 
perpetuate its power. 

It is in this way only that the church ever was 
united with the state. The church never sought 
the alliance — never conspired, and never achieved 
any such union of the state. The state has 
always sought the alliance of the church, and in 
republics the danger is not less of this kind of 
tampering and corruption than in monarchies. It 
is true that pubKc sentiment would not long 
endure it, and the favored denomination would be 
corrupted and ruined by the foul embrace, as 
the church in this alliance always has been. Yet 
the thought is full of terror, that the time may 
ever come when unprincipled men, to paralyze 
the influence of Christianity, and perpetuate their 
own bad eminence, shall be able to marshal with 
jealousy and hate, the great denominations of our 
land, one against another. For so mighty are 
they, and so furious are ecclesiastical politics, that 
the conflict would be like the battle of angels — 
opening infernal artillery on the one side, and 
heaping mountains on their foes on the other. 
But mark my words: there will never be a union 



118 



PERILS OF ATHEISM^ 



of church and state in this nation, unless it be 
one which is sought by infidels in power, to per- 
petuate their own ascendency — and it will com- 
mence in persecution, and end in civil , war. 

There is one device more put into operation 
by the atheistic fraternity, which, in ingenuity 
on their part, and credulity on the part of 
others, surpasses all which has been witnessed in 
modern days. 

It is the device of making the performance of 
our christian duties, and the exercise of our reli- 
gious liberty, evidence of conspiracy against lib- 
erty; and the most beneficent and indispensable 
efforts to perpetuate our republican institutions ev- 
idence of treason. It is reduced to a certainty 
that civil government cannot administer the moral 
influence which is needed to diffuse and perpet- 
uate moral principle and virtue through the na- 
tion; and that a vast effort of spontaneous benev- 
olence must be made to rescue our nation from 
barbarian ignorance and fiendish depravity. This 
auspicious work the several christian denomina- 
tions are attempting with praiseworthy diligence, 
by efforts to educate a competent ministry, to 
multiply the bible, to distribute tracts, to send 
out and sustain missionaries, and build churches 
and bring our wandering millions under evangeli- 
cal instruction. 

And what do we hear but the outcry of a 
conspiracy to unite church and state? And these 
are the items of the evidence against us: we 
have a Bible Society, sustained by all denomina- 



PERILS OP ATHEISM. 



119 



tions, and have attempted to supply every family 
in the nation with bibles — and this is one evi- 
dence of treason. 

We have a Sabbath School Union, in which 
a million of children are taught to read and un- 
derstand the bible; and sabbath school libraries 
are springing up over the land — and this is an- 
other evidence of treason. An American Tract 
Society, to send out to every door, over, city and 
land, fragments of knowledge, which, by larger 
book and libraries, would never be sent— little 
portions of the bread of life, till the main 
supply can come up; and what do we hear 
but "conspiracy! conspiracy!" And our tracts 
are held up, and shaken in our faces, as evidence 
to strike us dumb. Yes, we have the auda- 
city, in day light, to print and give away 
tracts. Time would fail me to mention all the 
logical evidences of our guilt of this sort, with 
the publication and repetition of which the bra- 
zen throat of the lying trump of fame has been 
worn smooth and polished, or to describe the 
apparitions and frights which have danced in dis- 
turbed imaginations, over the land like the 
gambols of witches in days of yore. 

Truly, it would be very convenient to an inva- 
ding army, coming to take away our liberty, to 
fill the country with panic fear of their own 
soldiers, and to need no other evidence to confirm 
distrust, but to refer to their rifles, and bayonets, 
and excellent discipline, and ample munitions; 
and yet, such, and only such are the proofs by 



120 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



which atheists would propagate the alarm of church 
and state union. But the weapons of our war- 
fare are not carnal, whatever theirs may be, 
but spiritual — moral — the weapons of truth and 
reason, and fervent prayer, and universal ac- 
tion. We mean by the moral influence of 
Christianity to save both atheists and ourselves 
from ruin ; and in what better, or other way, can 
we do it, than to be instant in season, and out 
of season, to spread the bible, and circulate tracts, 
and multiply ministers and missionaries to preach 
the gospel? And yet it is this exercise of our 
rights, and performance of our republican and 
christian duties — doing just such things to pro- 
mote Christianity and civil liberty, as our accu- 
sers are doing to secure its destruction, which they 
take up and propagate as evidence of treasona- 
ble designs. 

But, by such evidence, what may not be 
proved? I can prove most conclusively, that the 
farmers and manufacturers, merchants and me- 
chanics, of this city, have formed a terrible conspi- 
acy to burn us all up. Is it not notorious that the 
farmers are collecting hay all summer, a very com- 
bustible material, which all the fall and winter they 
are bringing in and stowing away in certain places 
in the city? What can this be, for if it is not to 
set the city on fire? 

Then, the manufacturers are pouring in, and 
crowding our stores with cotton goods, a most 
combustible material, reserved, no doubt, against 
the day of conflagration. What else can they 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



121 



be intended for? And then, we are credibly in- 
formed, by men who have been eye witnesses of 
the fact, that there are hundreds of places in 
this city, where day and night men are employed 
in making shavings, which, added to the hay and 
cotton, would make a most horrible conflagration — 
and what else can they possibly make them for? 
And as if this were not enough to burn us up, our 
steam boats are continually bringing in tar, and 
pitch, and turpentine, whose flames water cannot 
quench. And then there is a number of banks, 
with great deep, dark vaults, filled with money, 
half as much as the Bible Society has stowed away 
to buy up for slaves the people of the United States. 
What else can the banks want money for, but to 
buy these materials to burn up the city? And we 
are credibly informed, that nearly every great city 
in the land is in the same perilous condition. 
Do you not think we had better put out the lights 
and ring the bells? — just as much cause for it as 
to ring the tocsin of alarm about church and 
state conspiracy, to take avv^ay our liberties. 

The bearing of these false accusations on the 
population of our great cities, is especially ter- 
rific; for to the multitude who believe them, they 
are, in their exasperating influence, the same as 
if the pious part of the nation were attempting 
to enslave them, and are calculated to rouse up in 
self-defence, those infuriated movements whicb 
shall bid defiance to lavv^, and with the pave- 
ments of the streets batter down our institutions. 

In monarchical governments, the political influ-^ 



122 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



ence of cities is a match for the throne. Twice 
has France been revolutionized, and Europe sha- 
ken by the good city of Paris; and London, had 
not the reform bill passed, had probably revolu- 
tionized England. In our own country, our cities 
wield no small portion of the political power of 
the nation — they are the depositories of the 
national capital — the channels of intercourse, the 
concentration of intellect, and enterprise, and 
physical power, which, if not bound to good be- 
haviour by the fear of God, and an unperverted 
public sentiment, no police can govern, no troops 
control. There, also, are those magazines of 
wo, reserved for the day of vengeance; made up 
of ignorance, improvidence, and crime, and infu- 
riated envy and wretchedness — at the disposal of 
irreligious and ambitious men. 

It is a problem yet to be solved, whether, 
under a republican government, and within the 
reach of a perverted and profligate suffrage, the 
police of our cities can be permanently invested 
with power sufficient to execute the laws for the 
protection of life, and liberty, and property. By 
an all pervading intellectual and moral culture, 
it can be done; but without an efficient, con- 
stant, successful effort on this point, the floods of 
desolation will burst out and roll over us. The 
evangelization, or demoralization of our cities, may 
be the pivot on which our own, and the world's 
destiny will turn. 

With respect to the remedy for political athe- 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



123 



ism, a few things, before we- close, may properly 
be said. 

It is perfectly evident that we must not rely 
chiefly on legal protection and municipal reg- 
ulations. This would be to perpetuate the mis- 
take — to reap the disappointment of all past 
ages. The experiment of governing mind by 
force, has been thoroughly made, and found 
abortive. The providence of God is eman- 
cipating mind, with reference to its ultimate uni- 
versal government, by intelligence, and moral influ- 
ence, and public sentiment, acting under the gui- 
dance of heaven, and the sanctions of eternity. 

Laws need not, cannot be dispensed with. But 
exclusive reliance on them would inevitably be fatal. 
Their benign efficacy depends on a state of pre- 
paration, preceding their action — upon a moral 
culture and discipline — ^upon correct views, habits 
and feelings, and an unperverted, powerful, pub- 
lic sentiment; without which, Xerxes might as 
well chastise and chain the Hellespont, as laws 
control an undisciplined, turbulent community. 

Particularly must all penal laws against atheism, 
and infidelity, and heresy be forever impotent; 
for free inquiry is the birth-right, and the duty 
of man, and the only condition of all pervading 
truth, and intelhgent self-government. In this age 
of universal action, men will think; and the more 
obstructions you multiply, the more will the ob- 
structed tide rise and burst out in eccentric des- 
olation. Penalties and force will not avail to 
repress error; and if they would, their adaptation 



134 



PERILS OF ATHEISM, 



is equal to repress the truth — and the perverted 
has, in all ages, been more frequent than the 
unperverted application. Laws and penalties 
have hindered more truth, and protected more 
error than all causes beside. They have been 
the citadels of error, and batteries against the 
truth. If, as incident to free inquiry, there should 
be the busy licentiousness of the press in the 
propagation of error, it must be so — it is in this 
imperfect state, inseparable from civil and reli- 
gious liberty. Nothing on earth is perfect; but 
the unrestrained collision of mind v^ith mind, is 
a lesser evil than coercive attempts at regula- 
tion, and in its results the nearest approximation 
to a perfect condition of society, of which human 
nature admits. It taxes the intellectual energies 
of the friends of Christianity and liberty, and 
brings out an energy of mind, and a blaze of 
truth, and an intensity of benevolent activity, 
which will in its movements produce a greater 
diffusion of correct opinion, and exalt society to a 
higher eminence than it otherwise would have 
attained, without the excitement and efforts 
created by resistance. 

All these efforts then, at perverting the mind 
and corrupting the heart of the nation, must be 
met by argument. 

Truth is based on evidence, reason, and 
utihty, while error has nothing to stand upon, 
and no weapons but sophistry for its defence, and 
if with such vantage ground the friends of truth 



PERILS OF ATHEISIVI. 



125 



cannot, or will not, maintain their cause, they 
ought to perish in its ruins. 

As atheism is at present the predominant type 
of the sceptical mania, those who are set for 
the defence of the truth, and all intelligent 
men should be well versed in the whole argu- 
ment for the being of a God, and in all the 
wily and popular sophistry by which it is as- 
sailed. The argument as conducted by Paley, in 
his Natural Theology, is popular, and for all 
who will read it, and are willing to be con- 
vinced, may sufSce. But while the mania rages 
many will breathe the infected atmosphere, who 
have no access to this particular antidote — th6 
remedy needs of course a minuter form and a 
wider dispersion, and demands at present the 
more frequent agency of the pulpit, and the 
constant dropping of paragraphs in periodicals and 
newspapers, and the omnipresent instruction of 
tracts. 

In conversation also, at home and by the 
way side, it behooves the friends of truth, not 
only ecclesiastics but laymen, to be able to give 
a reason for their christian hope, and by sound argu- 
ment to convince gainsayers — for the disease is 
as anti-philosophical, as it is anti-christian, and 
he is not worthy the name or the station of a 
patriot watchman, who does not descry the ap- 
proaching evil, and set himself seriously to 
guard the community against its invasion. 

This nation is destined to become uni- 
versally a reading nation, and may be, by 

l2 



126 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



timely care, guarded efficaciously against the 
follies and mischiefs of political atheists; but care 
and effort is indispensable, for, since their dis- 
comfiture by Dwight and a host of others, a' 
generation has arisen, to whom their cavils are 
now new, and the answers of other days unknown. 
The time was when Dwight ceased to preach 
upon the evidences of Christianity, so entirely had 
the mania of infidelity passed away; but, as if 
to take vengeance for past defeat, it has rushed 
by surprise upon the existing unarmed generation, 
and the battle must be fought over again, and 
probably for the last time, before that wicked 
one will be destroyed by the breath of his 
mouth and the brightness of his coming. 

But to meet the exigencies of the new gen- 
eration, the evidences of Christianity should be 
made familiar to the entire rising generation, 
from the pulpit, and in tracts, in popular 
familiar argument, and in little manuals formed 
for the libraries of every sabbath and common 
school. 

Especially is it important that the bible should 
be studied and explained, in all our colleges 
and elevated schools — its chronology, history, 
geography, mental philosophy, and natural histo- 
ry; its doctrines, arguments, eloquence, poetry, 
taste, inspiration, and the elementary principles 
of its interpretation. 

The bible read and understood, is in no 
danger of losing its ascendency, as an inspired 
book, over the understanding, and the conscience^ 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



127 



and the heart. It is ignorance of the bible, 
which is the parent of infidehty, and gives to its 
specious arguments power over the common 
mind, A system of well studied interpretation, 
would sweep away every objection, and bring 
every knee to bow and every tongue to 
confess. 

But argument alone is not all which the pre- 
sent exigency demands. The doctrines of politi- 
cal atheists are the consummation of folly, and 
ample justice cannot be done, in defending the 
community against them, without the touch of 
irony, which shall take off their fair disguises, 
and exhibit their unsightly proportions and com- 
binations. Truth can never be made ridicu- 
lous, but by caricature. Error can never be pre- 
sented as it is, without the ludicrous; the more 
accurately and vividly you portray its elementary 
principles, the more you develope its absurdities, 
and cover it with ridicule. There is no malig- 
nity in this. The entire beauty and power 
of truth cannot be felt, but in the presence of 
the odious, and ridiculous contrast — and public 
justice demands it. If the exhibition produce 
laughter, the fault is in the thing exhibited, not in 
the exhibiter. There are principles so ridiculous 
that grave debate exalts them to a consequence 
of bad eminence, to which, otherwise, they 
could not attain; and in such case inspiration 
has directed us to answer a fool according to 
his folly. There is, on this subject, no small 
amount of incorrect opinion and fastidious feeling 



128 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



among good men, from not considering duly, 
the place and use, and lawfulness and necessity 
of ridicule. All diseases do not demand the 
caustic, but there are sores that will yield to 
nothing else. Ridicule is the most potent weapon 
with which Christianity is assailed, and there is 
no doubt that in its proper place, it is one of 
the most powerful weapons of discomfiture to the 
assailant, and defence to the cause. 

There is one other remedy more potent than 
all — it is the united and emphatic decision of 
public sentiment, against these irreligious and li- 
centious opinions. There is nothing which these 
marauders so much fear, of which they so 
loudly complain, as their outlawry by public 
sentiment: they call it bigotry, malignancy, in- 
tolerance and persecution. 

The liberty they claim, is the liberty of 
thinking as they please, without the responsibility 
of any reacting opinion — of opening upon chris- 
tian societies and institutions, their batteries of 
invective, ridicule and denunciation, without the 
perils of a return fire — the right of universal 
denunciation, with the modest demand of univer- 
sal approbation and eulogy. But we are not so 
fond of this moral martyrdom, and while we 
would not apply penal sanctions, God forbid that 
we should withhold the steady withering frown 
of outraged and indignant virtue — there is no 
other effectual resistance. Whenever the public 
discrimination between truth and error, and 
common sense and folly, and moral purity and 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



129 



pollution, shall falter, so that profligate men 
shall encounter no reproving eye, and irreligious 
men no reaction of the puhlic mind, then are 
the flood gates open, and the stream of pollution 
is rolling deep and rapid under the foundations of 
our institutions, and it will be but a moment, be- 
fore, Hke Babjdon, they will sink never to 
rise. 

I cannot close this lecture without calling 
around me, in imagination, and with feelings 
of great respect and affection, the labouring 
classes of this nation, whose rehgious and politi- 
cal faith, these men would subvert. 

My beloved countrymen: — if there is an eye 
in the universe that pities you, or a heart that 
feels for you, or a hand stretched out for your 
protection especially — it is the eye, and the heart 
and the hand of heaven — it is your cause, 
that the christian revelation espouses. No 
other religion ever cared for the common 
people, ever brought them within the reach of 
instruction, or ever elevated them to intelligence 
and competence and virtue. In all Pagan, Ma- 
hometan, and Papal lands, they are in deep 
darkness and in chains, beneath grievous burthens. 
It is the bible and the sabbath, and the 
preaching of the gospel, and the schools, and 
the virtue, and the enterprise, and the equality, 
which Christianity creates, which dispels the 
darkness, and opens the prison door, and knocks 
off the chains, and breaks oS the yoke, and 
takes off the burdens, which have in all nations 



130 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



and ages been the lot of persons in your condi- 
tion. 

Infidels are republicans in theory and in tongue, 
but not in deed and in truth. They are not your 
friends; but God is your friend. He has pre- 
dicted and projected, and will accomplish your 
elevation. Jesus Christ is your friend. He was 
born of virtuous and industrious parents, in 
humble life; he performed your labours, felt your 
cares, bore in his own body your sorrows, and 
can be and is touched with the feeling of your 
infirmities. He knows how to emancipate, and 
elevate you, and mitigate the curse which has for 
ages rested so heavily upon you. But these in- 
fidel philosophers are blind, ignorant, untaught, 
and unteachable masters; who, while they pro- 
mise you liberty, are themselves the servants of 
sin; and while they offer to raise you, will thrust 
you down to deeper poverty, and reckless anima- 
lism, and wretchedness. 

What nation have they ever emancipated, 
but by a revolution, more terrific than despotism? 
What well ordered republic have they ever formed 
and maintained a single year? What community 
have they enlightened and purified? Where are the 
schools and colleges, for the sons of the poor, which 
they have founded? What single family have 
they blessed with purer affections, and augmented 
industry, and domestic peace? What single 
heart have they ever made better by the ex- 
tinction of evil passions, and the nurture of benevo- 
lence? What vicious man have they reclaimed, 



PERILS OF ATHEISM. 



131 



what poor man have they made rich, what 
miserable man have they sustained by their 
philosophy, in life or in death? 

Well meaning they may be, but it is the well 
meaning of ignorant and foolish men — ignorant 
of the bible, ignorant of history, ignorant of 
human nature, and those moral causes which 
have always been auspicious or pernicious — not 
knowing what they say, or whereof they affirm. 
Reckless are they of their own and of your best 
good; wanton, rash, and desperate are they in 
their experiments; moral maniacs, more utterly 
bereft of common sense than any other class of 
men who ever set up for guides and challenged 
confidence. The evidence cannot be heightened 
of the falsehood and folly of their system. 
Should they propose a system of agriculture, 
which reversed every one of the known princi- 
ples of natural philosophy, it would not surpass 
the violence which their system does to the 
equally well known, and established laws of 
mind, society, and moral government. That 
righteousness, such as they despise, exalte th a 
nation, and sin, such as they eulogize, is the 
destruction of a people, is as certain as the laws 
of vision or of gravity. 

It is hard to elevate the mass, and harder to 
sustain, and none but by the help of God and 
his institutions have been able to do it. Chris- 
tianity is the world's last hope for civil liberty; 
if this will not diversify the results of national 
prosperity, then are we with rapid strides making 



132 PERILS OF ATHEISM. 

for the precipice, and preparing to bid a long 
farewell to all our liberty. You must reject 
these evil counsellors. You must appreciate the 
bible, or you and yours will soon fall back into 
that state of hopeless ignorance and poverty, and 
vice, from which there is no resurrection. The 
priestcraft which has darkened and enslaved the 
world, is one which has rejected or sequestered 
the bible: not that which gave it to the common 
people, and preached the gospel to the poor. 
It is Christianity which introduces universal liberty, 
which equalizes and elevates, and it is its absence 
which puts you down. The conspiracy against 
your liberties is forming by those who would 
banish from you the day of rest, and intellectual 
and moral improvement, and doom you and your 
families to toil seven days instead of six with- 
out the least increase of remuneration. This 
it is which will unintellectualize the labouring 
classes, and throw them back into the distance 
beyond the Ught of hope, and the reach of 
successful competition. If you wish to be free 
indeed, you must be virtuous, temperate, well 
instructed, with the door of honor and profit 
open to you, and to your children. As the 
sun draws up the whole body of the ocean it 
passes over, raising the tide in the career of 
his glorious way, so will the sun of righteous- 
ness take hold of you and your families and 
raise them up, and bring them within the con- 
stant attraction of hope and virtue. Those who 
wish for the preservation of the sabbath, are 



PERILS OP ATHEISM. 



133 



not bigots; they do not seek a union of 
church and state; they seek the unextinguished 
lustre of that moral sun for your sake, who 
with it will rise and without it will go down 
to where all the laboring classes of the world 
have been, and now are — whom the bible and 
the sabbath have not emancipated and ele- 
vated. 

It is the agriculturists, merchants, manufactu- 
rers and day laborers, of the nation, who 
must decide its destiny. It is your hearts that 
must be the sanctuary of liberty; and your 
conscience that must stand sentinel, to prevent 
her perversion, and your bodies that must con- 
stitute a rampart around those holy and blessed 
institutions of heaven, which God has given to 
man in the bible — whose blessings our fathers 
with toil and blood put in motion, and which 
with augmenting prosperity, at every step, have 
come down and are now rolling around us 
like the waves of the sea; blessings which urge 
themselves upon us, and from which we cannot 
flee, and whose blest intrusion we cannot resist, 
but by taking counsel once more to break the 
bands of christ, and cast away his cords from us. 
We need not petition congress to spare the 
sabbath, — if they do, the people can desecrate 
the sacred day — the people must decide, each 
man for himself and his family, whether he will 
live under the government of God, and enjoy 
its sunshine, and breathe its Hberty, and be 
elevated by its power and sanctified by its pu- 

M 



134 



PBRILS OF ATHEISM. 



rity^ and blessed by its exuberant, unnumbered 
and inexhaustible blessings; or, go back to the 
midnight of ignorance, and the bondage of 
corruption. 



LECTURE VI. 

THE 

ATTRIBUTES AND CHARACTER 

OP 

GOD. 



EXODUS XXXIV. 6, 7. 

AND THE LORD PASSED BY BEFORE HIM, AND PROCLAIMED, THE LORD, 
THE LORD GOD, MERCIFUL AND GRACIOUS, LONG-SUFFERING, AND 
ABUNDANT IN GOODNESS AND TRUTH, KEEPING MERCY FOR THOU- 
SANDS, FORGIVING INIQUITY, AND TRANSGRESSION, AND SIN, AND 
THAT WILL BY NO MEANS CLEAR THE GUILTY; VISITING THE INI- 
QUITY OF THE FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN, AND UPON THE 
CHILDRENS' CHILDREN, UNTO THE THIRD AND TO THE FOURTH 
GENERATION. 

Great errors in doctrine, result usually from 
mistaken conceptions of the attributes and char- 
acter of God. There are two extremes to which 
the mind is Uable: the one is to regard the divine 
being only in his public character, as the law- 
giver of the universe; and his power, and wisdom, 
and goodness only as they are manifested in his 
public relations in the government of a sinful 
world. 

135 



136 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



In one view, all which is dark, and terrible, 
and irresistible, is gathered about him — all which 
is spotless in purity, and vehement in his hatred 
of sin, and inexorable in its punishment. He is 
surrounded by fire, and storms, and earthquakes, 
and pestilence, and war — the symbols of present 
and coming wrath — his eye is fixed on public 
justice, and his heart glows with a benevolence 
too vast to hold sympathetic communion with 
the guilty and the miserable. 

Though there is some truth in these views, in their 
place and proportion, they are not the whole truth, 
and therefore misrepresent the character of God 
almost as fearfully as if they were false. They con- 
stitute a dark cloud, behind which all heaven's 
artillery is put in action, to extinguish hope, and 
keep a rebel world in a state of terror and 
reckless desperation. 

And they are doubly injurious, because, ever 
since the fall the fear of God has usurped the 
place of filial confidence, and has been exces-? 
sive. A dread of him is upon the mind of guilty 
man, which, in imitation of the first pair, leads 
him to flee and hide from his presence. 

In all false religions, fear has ever been the 
predominant principle of worship; and rage, and 
cruelty the principles to be appeased. And even 
where the light of the gospel has shined, and 
its voice has proclaimed peace, the quaking, and 
standing afar off, has not ceased. God to the eye 
of guilt and unbelief, appears too great, too dis- 
tant, and too much engrossed with his vast con- 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



137 



cerns of state, and too holy and too just to inspire 
with confidence the guilty, and bring them with 
humble boldness near. It is the object, therefore, 
of God, in the gospel, to reassure his ruined 
guilty creatures, of his unextinguished kindness 
for them, and to bring them back sanctified and 
forgiven, to his fellowship and favor. 

it is no doubt important, that man should be 
well certified of the holiness and justice of God; 
and that ultimately, he will, by no means, clear 
the guilty. But to overcome the panic, and bring 
the full and saving power of the gospel upon 
alienated mind, it is not less important, that sin- 
ners should be made to feel that God loves and 
pities them, than that he abhors sin, and will 
not fail to punish. Compassion alone would cre- 
ate presumption, and justice alone desperation. 
The mingled influence of both is needed to alarm 
the sinner to flee from wrath, and to allure him 
with humble boldness to fly to God by Jesus 
Christ. 

But instead of this justly balanced exhibition, 
many rush into the opposite extreme. They divest 
the most holy intirely of public responsibilities, re- 
garding him only in the capacity of a benevolent 
individual, consulting alone the direct impulse of 
kind feeling, without any reference to the gen- 
eral consequences. They cancel all the pubhc 
responsibilities of Jehovah to the universe as 
its moral governor. With the magic wand 
of unbelief, they dispel the darkness round aboii 
his throne, and put out the fires, and stop ih(% 



138 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



mighty thunderings, and the voice of the tram« 
petj and array with smiles the face of heaven 
ahke upon the righteous and the wicked-r— des- 
tined, hy dint of omnipotence, to those transfor- 
mations which shall consummate their meetness 
for heaven, and make them happy. 

The fact is too evident to be denied, that both 
the majestic and terrific, the gentle and the win- 
ning exhibitions of the divine character are con- 
tained in the bible, and are correct exhi- 
bitions of the divine mind, as its attributes 
and character are developed in the creation 
and government of the intelligent universe. In 
the administration of moral government, there is 
occasion also for these seemingly opposite attributes 
and exhibitions of character. They are harmo- 
nious and indispensable to a perfect character, 
and to the administration of a perfect moral 
government. 

It will be the object^ therefore^ of this lecture^ to 
give a concise account of the attributes and character 
of Godn as disclosed in his works^ and revealed in 
the bible* 

This will be especially important, because cor- 
rect conceptions of the relations of God to the 
universe, as its lawgiver — of his providence, as 
the administration of a moral government — of his 
word, as a system of remedial legislation for the 
recovery to holiness of lost subjects, and correct 
definitions of his attributes, natural and moral, 
as displayed in this great work — include a large 
portion of the elementary principles of theology. 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



139 



while false conceptions of his attributes and char- 
acter, hang sackcloth about the sun of righteous- 
ness, and break the main-spring of his governmento 
We observe, then, 

1. That God is a spirit. 

By spirit, we do not mean that nondescript, 
unthinking, undesigning energy, denominated na- 
ture — that all-pervading soul of the universe — the 
fountain of effervescence and fermentation — the 
volcanic centre of emanation, and subsequent 
attraction and absorption — the flint and steel for 
the scintillation of mind, to fall back, in due time, 
into the form of fixed caloric. Such mysticism we 
abandon to those who can comprehend it, or love 
to dream amid the repetition of beautiful uncer- 
tain sounds, and glittering, undefined images. 

By spirit, we mean mind, as opposed to matter — 
intelligence, acting by design, as opposed to in- 
stinct — and diversified volition, in the view of 
motives, as opposed to an unthinking, irresistible 
necessity — a mind capable of intense desire, of 
permanent choice — the selection of its chief good, 
and of plan and subordinate volition and action, 
for its attainment — of copious affections, and social 
afiinities, and high enjoyment — capable, in sub- 
jects, of government by law and the rewards and 
punishments of an eternal state. 

Of the essence of mind or matter, we say 
nothing, because we know nothing. All we 
know of either, being by their attributes, as dis- 
played in cause and eflfect. That they are dif- 
ferent existences we conclude, because they dis- 



140 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



close no attributes in common; and. all their phe- 
nomena are dilBferent, so that it might as well be 
insisted, that matter is spiritual, as that mind is 
material — there being no foundation for saying 
either, but all possible evidence to the contrary. 
The only evidence of different material substan- 
ces, is, their different effects; and if the different 
phenomena of mind and matter do not evidence 
different existences, there would be no evidence to 
disprove the perfect homogeneity and identity of 
all things. 

But that there is a difference between matter 
and mind is evident from the total absence of 
intelUgence, thought, and voluntary, accountable 
action in the one, and its continual presence with 
the other. 

Should any insist that matter does think, and, 
desire, and love, and hate, and choose, and refuse, 
and deserve reward and punishment, and feel 
remorse, and praise, and blame, it must be admit- 
ted that we live in a most feeling, thinking world, 
and most wonderfully bashful too, and tenacious 
of concealment, considering how long and in how 
many ways it has been provoked — trodden on 
by the foot, vexed by the plough, tortured in the 
crucible, and subjected to mastication, and diges- 
tion, and transformations innumerable. If matter 
thinks and feels separately, each particle by itself, 
or mechanically in the partnership of atoms, that 
no indignation under such provocation should have 
emanated, no impatience been indicated, no groans 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



141 



extorted from its multitude of poor dumb mouths^ 
is truly wonderful. 

But if matter is voluntary, and wicked, and^ 
as the Gnostics supposed, the quintessence of moral 
contamination, then chemistry may cease its lucu- 
brations about the causes of earthquakes and vol- 
canic fire. Doubtless they are the spasms of a guilty 
material conscience, and the hell for material punish- 
ment. Should it be insisted that mind does not 
think as a percipient voluntary entity, but acts 
on mechanical principles, as a clock ticks, and 
that thoughts are turned out by the movements 
of the machine, great or small, light or weighty, 
according to the pattern, as molten lead falls down 
the shot tower; and that passions, affections, and 
volitions are only as the elTervescence of alkalies 
and acids, or the salutation of negative and pos- 
itive batteries; in that case, we shall be permit- 
ted ever to admire the accident by which that 
which does not act, think, and choose with 
intelligent accountability, should have conducted 
itself so exactly through all periods of time, as 
if it did. 

3. God is eternal. 

No effect can exist without a cause. Nothing 
to the intuition of mind is more certain than this. 
It is a self-evident proposition, and the basis of all 
knowledge; for if effects can exist without a caus^ 
we are yet to acquire the evidence that any 
thing exists at all. For existence is known only 
by its attributes, and attributes only by the 
effects they produce. But if effects may exist 



142 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



without a cause, they no longer evidence the exis- 
tence of any attributes or any existence whatever. 

But all which the eye falls upon, and the mind 
contemplates, presents itself in the form of an 
effect. No man is the author of his own being 
and powers. Each is dependent as an effect upon 
some antecedent cause. But as there is design 
manifested in body and in mind, there must, in 
each case, or some where in the series, be design 
in the antecedent cause; for perpetual design, 
without any designer, would be an effect without 
a cause, as really and more wonderfully than 
the existence of the material universe without a 
cause. If then there ever was a period in which 
finite minds did not exist, there must have existed 
an eternal intelligence and power, equal to their 
formation. 

Should it be said, as it has been said, that each 
mind in the series is dependent, but the series is 
eternal, this is only to escape the difficulty, by 
pushing it back into darkness; for either every 
individual in this series had a beginnings or some 
one in it is eternal. But if there be an eternal 
cause of the series, it must be self-existent, 
and it must be commensurate to the effects 
which it produces, and considering what the mind 
and body of man is, the self-existent cause of 
the mind of man must be God. If, to escape the 
dilemma, you say that no one mind in the series is 
self-existent and eternal — all had a beginning, 
and each is dependent on the other, this is only 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



143 



to augment, at every step backward, the absur- 
dity of accumulating effects without a cause. 

Suppose a chain should be let down from an 
unknown height, and I should ask one of these 
philosophers what it hangs upon. Would it answer 
to say, the lower link hangs on the next? But 
what does the second, the third, the tenth, the 
thousandth hang on? Each on the link above, — 
but what is the great staple, with something above 
it, which holds up the whole? There is none. 
The whole chain hangs on nothing. No single 
link of it could be sustained without a link above, 
but the intire chain hangs on nothing. 

The intire universe, then, of dependencies, rises 
up around us, proclaiming with trumpet-tongue, 
that he who made us is divine. With shield of 
adamant, they turn aside sceptical cavils; and 
with sword and spear, drive us to the conclusion, 
that he who made all things is God. 

3. God is self-existent. 

The meaning is not that God is self-created, 
which would be a contradiction; nor that he is 
self-sustained, implying that his existence depends 
on his own voluntary effort to perpetuate his 
being; but that his existence is underived, and 
independent of external causes, and as inca- 
pable of cessation as of beginning — that his 
continuance no more depends on choice, than 
his underived, eternal being; and that unending, 
unchanged existence belongs to the very nature 
of God, as really as dependence and mutability 
belong to all which is created. This is the tes- 



144 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



timony of reason; for why should that which is 
underived, and independent of any outward cause, 
and has existed from eternity, ever cease to be? 
It is also the testimony of the bible : " I am 
that I am;" — "With whom is no variableness, 
neither shadow of turning;" — "From everlasting 
to everlasting thou art God." 
4. God is omniscient. 

He knows all real and all possible things. 
Otherwise there would be no evidence of the 
absolute perfection and immutability of his pur- 
poses and their execution. For if all that is pos- 
sible to infinite wisdom, and goodness, and power, 
were not open and naked before him, he might 
form defective plans, and make discoveries and 
changes by experience. But before he commenced 
creation, known unto God were all his works. The 
immensity of the diversified possibility of things 
lay open before him; from the intire of which, 
wisdom and goodness selected the system which 
should be. To this system, in all its attributes, 
parts, dependencies, and movements, and results, 
his knowledge extends, through all its existence 
of past, present and future. It does not, how- 
ever, follow from this, as some have supposed, 
that to the divine mind there is no such thing 
as the succession of events, and that to him, pre- 
sent, past, and future, are one eternal now. That 
there are no successive developments of knowl- 
edge to the divine mind, is certain. That all 
truths and facts were present to the mind of 
God, from eternity, and are always present, none 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



145 



can doubt; but then his knowledge is correct 
knowledge. He sees things as they are. Unlessj 
therefore, all events co-exist, and are actually 
one eternal now, they cannot appear to be 
so to God, without supposing his mind to 
be under a palpable delusion. There is a 
difference, a real, actual difference, between 
past, and present, and future; between an event 
which has come to pass, and one which is yet 
to be; and no doubt, to the divine mind, while 
all existence is known constantly and clearly, as 
if it were present before him, it is known as 
actual existence only in the' order in which it 
becomes such. The relations of past, present, and 
future existence are real, and therefore, are as 
real to the divine mind, as to human minds. 

The omniscience of God is taught in the bible, 
in language worthy of the theme, and of the 
mind who moved the holy men of old to give 
it utterance. "I am a God at hand, saith the 
Lord, and not a God afar off;"—" Can any hide 
himself in secret places, that I shall not see 
himf— "Do not 1 fill heaven and earth? saith 
the Lord." 

5. God IS omnipresent. 

This is to be understood only of his knowl- 
edge and constant efficiency throughout all his 
works. Of the essence of spirit, if there be 
such a thing, distinct from its developed attribute^ 
we know nothing, and the scriptures say nothing 
That God fills immensity, as matter occupies 
space, is not the form in which his omnipres- 
N 



146 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



ence is taught in the bible; but that, as the 
human mind exerts its wisdom, and benevolence, 
and powers, on all parts of the material system 
it inhabits and controls, in like manner, the energy 
of the divine mind extends constantly to the 
upholding and government of the intire universe. 

The ubiquity of the divine inspection, support, 
and government, extends alike both to the natu- 
ral and moral universe — to matter and to mind — 
to physical and to moral government — it being 
to Jehovah just as practicable to execute his 
purposes of moral government by moral influence, 
as to control the material movements of the uni- 
verse by his direct omnipotence. The omnipres- 
ence of God is most forcibly and most beauti- 
fully taught in the following language of the 
139th Psalm: 

" O Lord, thou hast searched me, and know me. 
Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising: 
thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou 
compassest my path, and my lying down, and 
art acquainted with all my ways. For there is 
not a word in my tongue, but* lo, O Lord, thou 
knowest it altogether. 

" Thou hast beset me behind and before, and 
laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is 
too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain 
unto it. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or 
whither shall I flee from thy presence? If 1 
ascend up into heaven thou art there ; if I make 
my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If 1 
take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy 
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold 
me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me; 
even the night shall he light ahout me. Yea, 
the darkness hideth not from thee; hut the night 
shineth as the day: the darkness and the light 
are hoth alike to thee.^' 
6. God is almighty. 

He can do all things which are in their nature 
possible. 

Contradictions are impossibilities. To cause a 
thing to be, and not to be, at the same time, 
is an impossibility. To make a circle square, 
and a square round — to make happiness misery, 
and misery happiness — to make selfishness and 
envy right, and beneyolence wrong — to make 
matter spirit, or spirit matter, — or to govern each 
by the same laws and means — all these would be 
contradictions — things impossible to any power. But 
in respect to things possible^ "all things are possi- 
ble" with God. His power is infinite and un- 
limited. There is in it no deficiency to accom- 
plish any possible thing, and no obstacle to hinder 
or make it difficult. The intire field of uni- 
versal possibility is open to his power. He is the 
Lord God Almighty, the scriptures affirm, and 
his works declare it. He can create — can origi- 
nate being — can command a universe to arise up 
around him, where before emptiness and silence 
reigned. 

It is to be observed, that the power of God 
is always associated indissolubly with infinite 



148 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



wisdom and benevolence, and is limiied only 
Dy the wise and benevolent constitution vrhich 
God has given to things, and the laws which he 
has adopted for their most perfect government. 
There is nothing in its nature possible, which 
God cannot do — and yet, there are innumerable 
things, in their nature possible to be done, which 
God will not do, because it would not be possi- 
ble to bring them in as parts of the wisest and 
best system; because, without abandoning the 
wisest and best system, he could not do them. 
He could, so far as power is concerned, pardon 
sin without an atonement; but he could not make 
it a wise and benevolent act, in the administra- 
tion of the best possible system of moral govern- 
ment. He is as able, so far as power is con- 
cerned, to utter falsehood as truth. But he is 
not able — no power is competent to make false- 
hood as wise and benign in moral government, 
as immutable truth. 

It is to be remembered that the power of God in 
the government of the natural and moral world, cor- 
responds always with the nature of the subject — the 
one, he governs by his power acting on the attributes 
which he has given to matter; the other, by his 
power acting upon mind, through the inter- 
vention of motives contained in his law, gos- 
pel, and providence, and administered and made 
effectual by his spirit. In the material universe, 
he can do all by his power direct on matter, 
which his perfect plan demands; and in the world 
of intellect, and free agency, and accountability. 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



149 



he can do all by his laws and providence, and their 
administration by his spirit, which his hand and coun- 
sel has determined to be done. He never decreed 
to govern the sun by the ten commandments, 
nor to govern free, accountable mind, by direct 
irresistible omnipotence. 
7. God is good. 

The preceding are his natural attributes, which 
appertain to his being, independent of choice, and 
without character, and are desirable or terrible 
as they are employed in the dissemination of 
good or evil. Happiness and misery are the two 
opposites — the good and the evil of the universe; 
and natural causes are useful or pernicious as 
they produce the one or the other, and intelli- 
gent beings are benevolent or malignant, as they 
prefer the one to the other, and consecrate their 
powers to their extension and perpetuity. 

Benevolence, then, is the love of doing good — 
of communicating and perpetuating enjoyment. 

In the divine being, it is not one of several 
attributes, but his intire moral nature — the gene- 
ric principle of his glorious moral excellence. 
It is not an instinct, but an enlightened prefer- 
ence of good to evil, and of doing good to doing 
evil. 

It is not a blind impulse of some irresistible 
fatality. God is a free agent, and in the selec- 
tion of his own chief end, acts as voluntarily as 
his creatures, in the selection of their highest 
good. He exists by necessity, and all his natu- 
ral attributes are independent of his choice. But 

N 2 



150 ATTRIBUTES AND 

his moral excellence, is in its fountain, and in 
all its streams, perfectly voluntary. There are 
intelligences who are selfish: they seek their own 
exclusively. The communication of good is not 
their supreme desire. They are like the vortex 
which swallows all which falls within its scope — 
crying give, and never saying it is enough. They 
find no pleasure in the communication of good, 
as their chief end, but rather in its monopoly. 
But the divine mind is like an ocean, of immea- 
surable circumference, unfathomable depth, and 
inexhaustible fulness — ever spontaneously overflow- 
ing in the communication of enjoyment. 

This benevolence of God, though vast, is also 
minute in its inspection, and impartial in its ad- 
ministration. All beings are regarded with good 
will, according to their capacity, and with com- 
placency, according to their character and deeds. 

It includes, of course, his own well-being, as the 
greatest good, and the well-being of the universe 
as involved in the stability of his counsels, and 
the prosperity of his kingdom, and extends to 
every creature capable of enjoyment, from angel 
to insect, with an impartiality which none but 
God himself can graduate. 

It is a benevolence which is pure aud unmin- 
gled. In convalescent human nature, it exists in 
alliance with great dqfects, of passion, and sel- 
fishness, and pride; but in God it is not so. There 
is no spot on his sun. God is light, and in him there 
is no darkness at all. Pure as crystal are the 



CHARACTER OF GOD, 



151 



waters which flow from the throne of God and 
the Lamb. 

The benevolence of God is also infinite. It is 
great like his power, and immense like his being. 

All created intellect, condensed into one mind, 
would be but a ray compared with the eternal 
mind, and all the benevolence which warms the 
hearts of holy beings, united, would constitute but 
a drop, when compared with the ocean of his 
love. It is a height, and depth, and length, and 
breadth, which cannot be comprehended. 

It is also a principle of omnipotent, constant 
eternal action. It is the nature of mind to act, 
and the blessedness of benevolent minds to act in 
doing good; and it is in his untiring, uninterrupted 
benevolent activity that he is God over all, blessed 
forever. 

8. God is just. 

The justice of God is his benevolence and wis- 
dom, expressed in the administration of rewards 
and punishments, for the public good, according 
to the character and deeds of his subjects. 

The existence of intelligent beings and ac- 
countability is indispensable to the greatest 
amount of enjoyment, and law is indispen- 
sable to the propitious government of mind, 
and reward and punishment is indispensa- 
ble to the moral influence of law. Were 
God, then, to create a universe of mind, capa- 
cious of enjoyment, and pressed by desire, and 
its own impatient activity, without guidance and com- 
petent motive to render obedience reasonable, and 



152 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



sin inexcusable, it would be no evidence of good 
ness, but rather of cruelty; and to annex sanc- 
tions which are never to be realized, would be 
to set forth the form of government without the 
reality. 

Justice in God is not, then, as to many it 
would seem, a dark, frowning attribute — a stern, 
unfeeling severity; but the benevolent, conserva- 
tory principle of the universe, by which the Lord 
God Almighty maintains the empire of righteous- 
ness, and extends around him the blessedness of 
an eternal day. Were the governing intelligence 
of the universe impotent, or indolent, or cruel, 
or capricious, or partial, his administration might 
well be dreaded. But while benevolence and 
mercy are mingled with justice, and not a stroke 
of the rod falls, which incorrigible wickedness 
and the public good do not render just and in- 
dispensable, none but determined rebels have 
cause to fear. 

Is justice in human governments a cold-hearted 
despotism? Who does not call for it when his 
character is assailed, when his rights of property are 
invaded, or his life is threatened, or when public 
insurrections threaten to put an end to the safe- 
guard of law? And no class of men are more 
eulogized as the benefactors of mankind, than 
those of incorruptible integrity, and unflinching 
courage, who hold the balance even, on the 
judgment seat? No good man has any pleasure 
in the punishment of a sinning fellow being; but 
he has pleasure in the pubHc purity, and happi- 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



153 



ness, which the prostration of law, and the pre- 
valence of anarchy would destroy. 

What should we think of the chief magistrate 
of a nation, sworn to see that the common- 
wealth receives no detriment, smitten with such 
tender-heartedness for pirates and robhers, as would 
let out desolation to sweep over land and sea, 
because he could not find it in his heart to pun- 
ish the guilty? There is nothing but justice 
which stands between any government, human 
or divine, and contempt and anarchy. And can 
it be thought desirable, and amiable in God, that 
he should lay aside the sword, and turn a face 
of smiles alike on the evil and the good, in this 
world of moral madness, and self-destruction? Is 
it considered that the most wretched possible 
condition of human beings, is that in which judg- 
ment is turned away backward, and justice stand- 
eth afar off, and truth is fallen in the streets, and 
equity cannot enter? That the most lovely fea- 
ture of a republic is the mild but efiicient admin- 
istration of equal laws — and the most repelling 
feature in despotism is its injustice — and the most 
intolerable scourge of anarchy its injustice — and 
that the most terrific circumstance in the world of 
wo, is its outlawry from all protection and benefit 
from the moral government of God, and its aban- 
donment to unrestrained malignity, and everlast- 
ing anarchy? 

9. God is merciful. 

Mercy is the exercise of benevolence in the 
reformation and forgiveness of the guilty, in ways 



154 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



consistent with the influence of law, and the 
safety of the intelhgent universe. 

In a state of loyalty, the divine henevolence 
flows full and unobstructed to every individual. 
Transgression, while it does not extinguish his 
good will, renders the practical expression of it 
impracticable, and demands the interposition of 
penal evil for the protection of law and order. 

The atonement, received by faith, places the 
subject in such relations to Christ, as that public 
justice does not demand his punishment, or forbid 
his forgiveness and restoration to favor, but opens 
wide the channel which sin had obstructed for 
his mercy to flow in; and God, who has no 
pleasure in the death of him that dieth — who 
never punishes because it is deserved, but always 
only because the public good demands it — now, 
released from the public necessity of punishment, 
in the exercise of mercy, freely pardons the 
believer, and receives him into favor. Mercy, 
then, is the personal benevolence of Jehovah, flow- 
ing in unison with public good, in the reforma- 
tion and forgiveness of lost men. 

It is a mercy, however, which always sees to it, 
that the commonwealth receives no detriment, and 
which moves only in the train of public justice 
satisfied, and the pubHc good protected. In close 
alliance with mercy, it may be added that God 
is slow to anger, and of great patience. Human 
passions are ascribed to God, not as identical 
with what exists in the divine mind, but as ana- 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



155 



logical. The metaphor has always some resem- 
blance to that which it represents. 

Between anger, as ascribed to God and to man, 
there is the coincidence of strong disapprobation 
and emphatic action in the infliction of evil; but 
with this difference, that in man, the impulse is 
mahgnant, while in God it is benevolent. In man 
it is personal revenge; in God it is public justice, 
for benevolent purposes. 

Long suffering implies that public justice does 
not always demand the immediate execution of 
the deserved evil, and that always God is disposed 
to defer the infliction as long, and to continue 
the means of reformation as long as the public 
good will permit. 

We may not omit to add that God is full of 
compassion. 

Compassion is sympathy for the afllicted and 
miserable. But such is the immensity of the 
divine nature, and the extent of his creation, and 
the magnitude and number of his worlds, and 
works, and the majesty and fulness of his benev- 
olence, as it flows in the channels of his 
general laws, that single minds are tempted 
to feel as if the heart which guides the universe, 
and wakes about the throne the song, and pours 
through eternity the tide of joy, could not stoop 
to hear the sigh of secret sorrow, or move with 
sympathetic compassion and personal friendship 
for the distressed, and much less, that he in whose 
sight the heavens are not clean, will not look down 
with affectionate compassion upon the guilty and ill 



156 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



deserving. Nor is it till we have considered 
the adaptation of his capacity to the minutest, 
as well as to the greatest of his works, and the 
condescension of his henevolence, to the most lim- 
ited as well as to the greatest capacities he has 
formed; and added to these, the reiterated declara- 
tions of his compassion contained in his word, that we 
can hring home, realizingly and efficaciously, the 
sense of his presence with us, and constant, benig- 
nant care, and quick and real sympathy. But it is 
only as the vastness of his being, the extent of his 
works, the glory of his laws and moral government 
and their administration are considered — in alliance 
with all the nearness and tenderness of parental 
affection — that the intire character of God comes 
out upon the soul, and all his claims to our con- 
fidence and love are felt, and the exceeding sin- 
fulness of sin is realized, and the riches of his good- 
ness apprehended in providing a Redeemer, and 
with such a sacrifice of feeling to himself and to 
his son, as must be implied in giving him up, to suf- 
fering and to death, that we might be delivered 
from shame, and live forever. 

It is the concentration of these majestic and 
touching traits of the divine character — this union of 
the vast with the minute; of strength with tenderness; 
of justice with mercy, and self-existent' blessed* 
ness with the most gentle movements of com- 
passion and sympathy, which melts instantly the 
heart it touches, and renders the moral power 
of the gospel, in the hand of the spirit, omnip- 
otent. Nor is it to be anticipated that until 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



157 



the clouds of a false philosophy ahoat the char- 
acter of God are dispelled, and its full-orbed mild- 
ness, and radiance, and power are let out upon the 
world, that nation after nation will fall down be- 
fore him as the sun of righteousness rolls his 
subduing hght over the earth, encountering little 
beside opposition, and leaving in his train nothing 
but loyalty and praise. 

But to hold up our faith to these blessed 
visions of the divine character, and to arm 
our ministry and the exhortations, and prayers of the 
church with power, we shall do well to remember 
that the greatness of the power and wisdom, and 
goodness of God, is illustrated in the formation of 
minds — every one of which, as lost or saved, 
and subject to the endless and augmenting knowl- 
edge of good or evil, is of more importance 
than the intire material universe. 

The condition of a perverted mind is also well 
calculated to lay hold upon the susceptibilities of 
benevolence, and of none more than of the mind 
of him who formed the ruined agent, and com- 
prehends the good rejected, and the evil chosen — 
the amplitude of the remedy, the urgent sincer- 
ity of its offer, and the voluntariness of its rejection, 
while the incorrigible ingrate is moving onward to 
the crisis of a confirmed and everlasting madness — 
where insatiable desire, and pinching famine, and 
wounded pride, and rankling envy, and fear, and 
ferocious hate, and terror, and sinking of heart, 
and lamentation, and despair will occupy the 
ever coming periods of duration* 



158 



ATTRIBUTES AND 



Miserable innocence, exposed only to tempo- 
rary evils, would not fail to participate in the 
compassion of the Deity; but how much more 
moving are the exhibitions of miserable guilt, 
exposed to evils which will never end, and obsti- 
nately regardless of deliverance. 

Nor does the immensity of the divine mind, or 
the extent of its supervision disqualify or disin- 
cline for minute, constant, and kind attention. 

When he projected creation, he understood his 
resources, and has not set for himself a task too 
hard. The Almighty fainteth not, neither is weary, 
and the watchman of Israel never slumbers — but 
superintends, with equal ease, the orbs whose 
being we learn from the telescope, and those 
minutest mites of animated being which the micros- 
cope brings up to our knowledge, from the down- 
ward distance. Minute and great are alike in re- 
spect to the adaptation of his powers, or the 
claims of mind on his benevolence. 

It is consistent with the purity of his holiness, 
and his pubKc character as the supreme execu- 
tive of the universe, that he should feel compas- 
sion for the miserable and the guilty. It impKes 
no complacency in sinful character, and no fal- 
tering of purpose in respect to the claims of 
public justice — but renders his administration more 
lovely, sure and terrible to the incorrigible — that 
it is the unchanging award of a benevolence full 
of compassion, but yet will by no means clear 
the guilty. 

It is compassion, mingled with parental govern- 



CHARACTER OF GOD. 



159 



ment and discipline, which gives it lovehness and 
tone. It is compassion in human governments, 
mingUng with justice, which takes off the appear- 
ance of crueltj, and makes them a terror to evil 
doers, and a praise to them that do well. 

Nor need our faith in the compassion of the 
Deitj be shaken by the strong and terrible expres- 
sions contained in the bible, of his abhorrence of 
sin — his anger, wrath, fury, and unalterable deter- 
mination to punish it. Metaphors express analo- 
gies, but not exact identity. There must be points 
of resemblance to render one thing the symbol 
of another; and how are conceptions of the move- 
ments of the divine mind to be communicated, 
but by the aid of some analogous movement of 
the human mind with which we are acquainted? 
Now anger includes strong moral disapprobation, 
and a strong purpose of inflicting evil, only with 
this difference, that in man, malignity and revenge 
is the spring of action, v/hile in God it is benev- 
olence in the form of public justice. It is, then, 
a suitable, forcible, terrific imagery, to speak of 
God as angry, wroth, incensed, full of indigna- 
tion and fury. But it expresses only by the 
power of metaphor, the strength of his aver- 
sion to sin — the intensity of his purpose to punish 
it, and the terrible effects of public justice when 
the work of desolation shall begin. Anger in 
God is not mahgnant feeling — not any thirsting 
for the blood of the slain — not any pleasure in 
suffering, or an opportunity to inflict it — noth 
ing which will prevent compassion^ even while 



160 



ATTRIBUTES &C. 



the tide of desolation rolls — nothing which will 
ohscure the how, and a smiling sky to him that 
is humhle and of a contrite heart, and believeth 
in Jesus, 

Nor is the exercise of compassion inconsistent 
with the blessedness of God, if to any it should seem 
to he so. God understands his own character; 
and we are not permitted to thrust up the lamp 
of our philosophy, to prove that he he has mis- 
described his capabilities and emotions. But the 
delicate and tender susceptibilities of a mighty mind, 
would appear to be as indispensable to its enjoy- 
ment, as vast emotious of unmingled pleasure ; and 
quite indispensable to its fellowship with created 
minds, and especially so to revive the cofidence, 
and bring back to loyalty the dismayed, aliena- 
ted, jealous, fearful hearts of a ruined world. How 
sweet is the voice of mercy to the desperate or 
despondent mind — how soul-subduing the notes of 
divine compassion on the ear of guilt — how sweet 
the tender cords of love, drawing the soul into 
fellowship with heaven, while, as yet, it half be- 
lieveth not for joy. But it is enough that in 
believing in the sympathetic affections of the 
divine mind, we do not follow philosophy or fables, 
but divine testimony. God, who cannot lie, has 
caused it to be written, that he is God over all, 
blessed forever; and at the same tim^ that he is 
full of compassion, not willing that any should 
perish, but desiring sincerely that all should come 
to the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus. 



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